PARIS, France — Athletes from around the world have arrived in France for the Paris Olympics, which begin Friday with the opening ceremony.
Members of the U.S. women's gymnastics team, including past gold medalists Simone Biles and Suni Lee, began practicing Thursday at Bercy Arena in Paris.
Biles, 27, is looking to complete her comeback after withdrawing from competition during the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
Biles, the Olympic all-around gold medalist from 2016, performed several training routines Thursday including the Yurchenko double pike vault, a difficult skill that has never been done in Olympic competition.
Biles has spent years perfecting the move, which involves a roundoff onto the springboard, a back handspring onto the vault and ends with a piked double backflip to the landing.
For the 2024 Summer Games, Biles is poised to give the difficult vault its Olympic competition debut.
Lee, the all-around Olympic gold medalist from the Tokyo Games in 2021, had a strong showing during podium training in Paris on Thursday.
Lee is competing in her second Olympics after multiple kidney-related issues that limited training and initially made her doubt whether she could return to Olympic competition. She had strong second-place all-around finish at the U.S. Olympic Trials last month.
When does Simone Biles compete in Paris?
Biles is headlining Team USA's women's gymnastics team for the Paris Olympics, along with fellow superstars Lee, Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey and 16-year-old newcomer Hezly Rivera.
Biles will open competition in Paris with a team qualifying event on Sunday, July 28.
When is the Paris Olympics opening ceremony?
The opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics will be held Friday.
Instead of being held in a traditional stadium, the opening ceremony will take the form of a four-mile-long floating procession down the Seine River.
NBC will begin live coverage of the ceremony at 10 a.m. MT on Friday.
The opening ceremony will be broadcast on NBC, Peacock, NBCOlympics.com, NBC.com and the NBC/NBC Sports apps.
Mike Tirico, Kelly Clarkson and Peyton Manning will serve as hosts of NBC’s opening ceremony coverage. "Today" hosts Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb will also be part of the broadcast team.
Where will the Paris Olympics be held?
Eighty percent of competition venues are within 6.2 miles of the Olympic and Paralympic Village in Paris.
The Olympics will use historic locations throughout France for competition venues.
Some of the venues include Eiffel Tower Stadium for beach volleyball, the Palace of Versailles for equestrian, Roland-Garros stadium for tennis, and the Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées for taekwondo and fencing.
Paris previously hosted the Olympics in 1900 and 1924, and will join London (1908, 1948 and 2012) as the only cities to host the Olympic Games three times.
