How the greatest gymnastics team ever assembled came together

RIO DE JANEIRO — They stood on the top of the podium, hands over hearts wearing matching necklaces of gold. “The Star Spangled Banner” was ringing through the Rio Olympic Arena and this outrageous United States women’s gymnastics team, the finest ever assembled, looked so polished, looked so perfect.

Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas, Laurie Hernandez, Madison Kocian and Aly Raisman. One beamed more than the next after winning gold by a record margin and unsurpassed brilliance.

Up in Section 112, they saw, through eyes full of both tears and pride, something entirely else. Out there were the little girls who tugged on their arms and begged with their hearts to get into this sport, like millions of other families. Out there were the daughters and these were the parents who all those days ago unknowingly began a journey of audacious dreams to a seemingly impossible place.

“She was just a bouncy child,” Ron Biles said of his daughter while celebrating in those stands. He laughed at the memory, at how absurd it seems now that they are here. “Jumping all over the place, messing up the furniture …”

“She was in a dance class but wanted to try tumbling,” Wanda Hernandez recalled, a few seats down the front row from Biles. “We signed up for a class back in New Jersey, but not enough kids signed up so it got cancelled. Laurie was just so sad, she said, ‘Mom, I want to do that class.’ So we found another class and …”

Madison Kocian got into gymnastics when her parents rented a gym for her fifth birthday party — “I liked climbing on everything,” Madison recalled. Gabby Douglas began when her older sister talked their mom into the sport when they were growing up in Virginia. A stunned coach immediately recognized outrageous ability. Aly Raisman started at 2, but really got serious later, when she darn near wore out old VHS recordings of the 1996 gold-medal U.S. team, the Magnificent Seven, and began mimicking everything they did.

As grand and global as this stage, it all began humbly, innocently, quaintly. “It sure wasn’t planned,” said Ron Biles, father of who is now the greatest gymnast of all time. And it progressed the same way: through all the classes and all the meets, through the stitched-up leotards and long rides to competition, through the stretched budgets and missed dinners.

It’s one step, then the next; one walk over and then a tucked Arabian double front. Somehow they all found themselves here, in Rio, on top of that podium, on top of the world, their daughters waving gold at them, blowing kisses at them, both sides fully aware of each other’s sacrifice and dedication and, well, the sheer love that drove the entire operation.

“That look at my mom, it never gets old,” said Gabby Douglas, here in her second Olympics, no less thankful for her mother Natalie.

Oh, the Olympics are a monster operation and gymnastics is big business and these competitions are political and ruthless and overwrought. It still begins, though, with just a kid looking for a path and a caring parent there to clear it, neither one with any idea how far it might lead. The child isn’t supposed to recognize all that goes into it at first. They do eventually.

“I know my parents put so much hard work into me,” Kocian said. “I know … it’s just something I can’t describe.”

“I just love them so much,” Raisman said.

Raisman’s mother and father, Lynn and Rick, have become famous in their own right from videos of them all but dying over every twist of Aly’s routine. It’s high comedy if you like seeing someone tortured. That’s the life of a sports parent, though. Aly now receives more texts inquiring about their mental state than hers. She just laughs. She’s protective of them. The online jokes about how Rick is always wearing the exact same red U.S. Olympic golf shirt — she wants everyone to know she makes him wear that and he actually does own other shirts.

“It’s good luck,” she said before laughing.

Back in Section 112, parents and siblings and extended families and friends spent their time hugging and crying and marveling over the whole thing. They hail from all over America, from Texas and New Jersey, Massachusetts and Virginia. There are different races and religions and their families come in all shapes and sizes.

Yet the core is similar — love. The journey is in many ways precisely the same. At some point this little kid was really good. At some point this little girl wouldn’t stop. At some point their little daughter was pointing at a television, at the once-little girls who came before them that were now standing on top of a podium staring out as the Stars and Stripes rose over the Olympics and said I’m going to do that, I’m going to be her.

“She said she wanted to be [at the Olympics],” Ron Biles said of Simone. He was an Air Force veteran, an air traffic controller, a Texan who preferred watching football. Now he was headlong into gymnastics, the gifted granddaughter he and his wife Nellie adopted and raised as their own, making the sport the center of his world (the family now owns and operates a gym outside Houston).

Biles said when Simone proclaimed her goal he understood the sacrifice it would take.

“We said,” Biles recalled, mimicking a deep gulp of air, ” ‘OK.’ ”

And now here they were.

“I’m just so proud,” Ron Biles said.

Soon enough the ceremony had ended, but not the celebration. The champions came marching across the arena floor, onto media obligations, onto the Olympic Village, onto a night of shared golden joy right out of a lifetime of dreams.

First though, they would walk near their parents, close enough for eye contact, close enough to mouth “thank you” and “love you” or just shout “Mom” or just to shout “Dad.”

There is more competition to come, more medals to be won. Individuals start on Thursday. There is no time for a party, no time for even five minutes. So this was as close as these ultra-tight families could get for a few more days. Phone calls are even limited. Focus is paramount. They all know the drill.

Besides, what else needed to be said? In the biggest of moments, it all goes back to the simplest of emotions. Smiles and tears. Screams and sobs. A shared look of shared understanding.

“Incredible,” Anthony Hernandez would say. He’s a court clerk in New York City. He’s a Jersey guy with a kid who wanted to tumble. He’s a dad and that’s his 16-year-old daughter who just lit up the world with her smile.

“I want to physically hug her,” he said. “I want to physically kiss her on the cheek. That’s what I am waiting for …

He let out a laugh.

“… and I want to see the Olympic Gold medal.”

All around him people laughed with him. All around him, everyone understood.