There comes victory, and then there are the rituals to celebrate it. In today’s sporting world, the flaunting of rituals has become the new normal, and the Paris Olympics are no different! Last Tuesday, in the women’s all-around gymnastics final, the Simone Biles-starring USA squad grabbed the title with full dominance over the opponents, Team Italy and Team Brazil. Obviously, Simone and Suni Lee wasted no time organizing a spectacular celebration in honor of such a victory. The squad shared a TikTok video later on, comically munching their gold medals. That raised a lot of fanfare and interest in asking who had been the principal planner of it. Well, Jordan Chiles had the answer. 

Recently, Suni Lee and Jordan came as guests on Today’s show. There, the host asked them about that viral celebration. Jordan steadfastly admitted that it had been Simone Biles’ idea. She suggested going with such a ritual. But Jordan enjoyed the taste anyway, of course, of her hard-earned medal. “How did they taste? Golden, golden,” she confirmed at the studio. However, there was already a glimmer of it because the broadcasters’ cameras had not overlooked any minute details. 

While the pair of Olympic all-around champions were preoccupied with one another, Simone’s voice projected loudly and was captured by the microphone. She could clearly be heard narrating her wish to pose “chomping on the gold medals.” On the same screen, Suni Lee shared her plan to make another TikTok video to celebrate their victory, and it was nothing short of exciting. 

With Suni’s lead, the squad posed in another TikTok video with Kanye West’s voice in the background. The voice repeated those legendary words that had filled the stage of the annual Grammy Award ceremony in 2005: “Everybody wanted to know what I would do if I didn’t win… I guess we’ll never know.” In the meantime, according to Jordan, it had been Simone who suggested posing in the celebration with their gold medals. 

Sharing a bit of it, she said, “People would do it with random stuff. And so her point of view, she thought, ‘What if we did it with our gold medals?’” Ultimately, the squad followed, and in each of the celebration videos on TikTok, the team appeared with the medals hanging around their necks. But those videos also raised questions. 

Another funny anecdote behind Simone Biles and the team’s TikTok videos

After reclaiming the gymnastics all-around team gold, the USA women’s artistic gymnastics squad enjoyed every bit of the celebration. The shared TikTok videos have exemplified those emotions. But Jade Carey, the Tokyo Olympic floor exercise champion, did not show up in any of the videos. However, on Tuesday evening, she came out to be one of the vital cogs to help the USA squad land the much-awaited victory. The fans couldn’t miss noticing Jade’s absence in those videos. So a fan asked in the comment box the most relevant question: “WHERE IS MISS JADE???” 

Simone Biles played the elder’s role again. Subsequently, her reply was, “She went to the bathroom & then we haven’t seen her since [funny emoji]”. That ended the discussion, though. Yet, with all these brief moments of showing guardianship, Simone Biles made her comeback at the Olympics memorable, not only for the fans but also for her teammates in the squad. So when Jordan claims, “She’s the greatest of all greats”, nothing feels exaggerated.