The US women’s gymnastics team finished second after qualifying for the first time in over a decade

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TOKYO – The routines Simone Biles puts together are so difficult that she can withstand a slip or two and still dominate.

Which country do you represent? Maybe not much anymore.

As the Olympic gymnastics champ kicked off her quest for repeat by topping the playoffs on Sunday, the four-woman U.S. team appears to be having a serious fight if it wants to win a third straight title.

The Russians scored the team’s highest score of 171,629 through the top three subdivisions at the Ariak Gymnastics Center, the first time in more than a decade that the Americans failed to finish the standings in any part of a major international event.

While Biles tops it all with a total of 57,731, it hasn’t been easy. She climbed off the carpet after a landing pass in her floor exercise, and then did basically the same thing on a vault. She responded with a solid set on uneven bars, but her amazing beam routine ended with her taking three major steps back after her descent.

The 24-year-old came to Japan as the face of the US Olympic movement, saluted the judges with a wry smile, then walked off the podium with a smile that looked like a mixture of relief, sarcasm and frustration.

There was so much to lose.

Jordan Chiles’ remarkably consistent trajectory that carried her to a spot on the four-women’s team ended with a blunder on the bars and a fall off the crossbar. Sunisa Lee overcame a performance like this on the floor to move up to second behind Biles using a routine electrical tape.

The Americans arrived in Tokyo riding a ten-year winning streak, fueled in large part by Biles’ unparalleled brilliance. Her routine is riddled with great difficulty, and often becomes a matter of arithmetic.

For the first time in a long time, when the numbers were collected, Americans found themselves searching the rankings for someone else.

ROC’s performance provided evidence that the former gymnastics superpower is in the midst of a rebound led by 21-year-old Angelina Melnikova. Even better, the Russians escaped the balance beam relatively unscathed.

The 4-inch piece of wood set 4 feet off the ground was where the country’s gold medal hopes had faded in recent years, yet there were no major issues during qualifying. The only major mistake occurred when Lilia Akhimova fell during the end of the acrobatic series.

No big problem. The Russians were allowed to drop their scores. Things will be different in the finals, when the encounter moves to a “three numbers / three” format where there is no margin for error. While Melnikova stressed that she would not anticipate what might happen on Tuesday, she believes that what was once a move for Americans will turn into something more compelling.

“We hope to win,” Melnikova said. “We are also going to fight and fight. We have to. That’s the expectation for us.”

And for the first time since the 2010 World Championships, it suddenly seems achievable.

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