A few steps too many and Vanessa Ferrari leaves the Olympics without a medal. The expected podium in the individual floor exercise final does not arrive and it is above all the last diagonal to compromise the blue's hopes for bronze, those extra little steps at the end of the last acrobatics. Once again the Italian champion is fourth and comes close to a success that will never come again. In fact, the disappointment of London is repeated, but in Rio the bite is more bitter if it is true that yesterday's competition marks the farewell of Orzinuovi's butterfly to gymnastics. In this way, perhaps with some regrets, you end a luminous career, studded with successes, with eight gold medals in various international competitions. At 26, the balance of this great little athlete is very positive and the Olympic medal is the only missing piece in a mosaic of victories, where she appears as the best Italian gymnast of all time.
On this occasion the chances of getting on the podium were very few, due to the presence of two phenomena such as the immense Simon Biles, gold medal, and the splendid Alexandra Raisman. The two North American stars, at the moment, have no rivals on the platform. Not only do they create exceptional acrobatics, to make your skin crawl, with what used to be called somersaults, double, triple, twist, tense or tucked up, but also because they perform these difficulties with rare perfection. In their fantastic flights, ever higher and more impossible, these athletes never lose control of their toes, knees, legs and arms. This makes all the difference. The jury always has to check the exercises of the champions, in order to draw up a ranking, because they are all good. But it's hard to find fault with them and when Biles brings her exercise to life the gap with the others jumps out at you. The choreography, the pirouettes, the movements of the arms, those of the legs, the expressiveness and the athletic gesture are beautiful. In two words, artistic gymnastics materializes in all its beauty in this girl of one meter and 44. Honor to merit therefore, in particular to an athlete who leaves her mark on the Rio games, winning 4 gold medals (team, individual, vault and floor exercise) and a bronze medal on beam, after a fall on apparatus.
Bronze medal in floor exercise yesterday for the pretty Amy Tinkler, English gymnast who did the right exercise at the right time. It is she who "snatches" the award from Vanessa, but this time without any polemical aftermath. In London the jury had given the same score to Ferrari and Alija Mustafina, but the medal had gone to the Russian because her floor exercise was easier. It seems a paradox, but the score is the result of the judgment on the execution added to the degree of difficulty, so a less complicated exercise that gets the same mark as a more complicated one is simply done better.
This time there's nothing to say: Tinkler is more precise and the judges reward her with 14.933 points; the difference with Vanessa is not much, but there is, 14.766 for the blue.
Erika Fasana also did well, the other Italian gymnast qualified for the floor exercise final: sixth place, with a total of 14.533
