Dipping into their second tier of major league-ready prospects, the Baltimore Orioles traded for their second starting pitcher in five days, acquiring left-hander Trevor Rogers from the Miami Marlins. 

In exchange, the Marlins will receive Connor Norby – who started at second base for the Orioles on Monday – and lefty-hitting outfielder Kyle Stowers, who debuted in 2022 but has been blocked from the big league club with the emergence of Colton Cowser and Heston Kjerstad. 

But this is a deal for now, and the cost for a pitcher with a 2-9 record and a 4.53 ERA indicates how high the prices are. 

Rogers, 26, has pitched better of late, though. He has a 3.17 ERA in his last nine starts, and the Marlins are 5-4 in those games. 

With Rogers under club control for two more seasons, the Orioles’ rotation is taking shape both for this year and next. Corbin Burnes – eligible for free agency after this season – remains the undisputed ace this season, followed by fellow right-hander Grayson Rodriguez. 

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Friday, the Orioles added Zach Eflin from the Tampa Bay Rays as their No. 3 starter and now will follow him with Rogers, the 13th overall pick in the 2017 draft by Miami. 

Rogers made the All-Star team in 2021 and was Rookie of the Year runner-up after posting a 2.64 ERA in 25 starts. 

Stowers, 26, was the Orioles’ second-round pick in 2019 out of Stanford. He debuted in 2022 but injuries and the Orioles’ enviable outfield depth has prevented further opportunities since. He had a solid 19-game stint with Baltimore this season, batting .306 with a .797 OPS. And he has little left to prove in the minors, with 39 homers in 497 at-bats at Class AAA Norfolk the past two seasons. 

Norby, 24, was Baltimore’s second-round pick in the 2021 draft, out of East Carolina. He debuted this season and homered twice in his 32 at-bats and has a lifetime .368 on-base percentage and .866 OPS in the minor leagues. Like Stowers, Norby faced a massive talent backlog at his positions, with second-year man Gunnar Henderson entrenched at shortstop, former No. 1 overall pick Jackson Holliday looming at second base and Jordan Westburg, like Henderson a second-year All-Star, ready to take over full-time at third. 

Editor’s note: Follow Olympic gymnastics live results, scores and highlights as Simone Biles and the U.S. women’s team compete in the team final.

PARIS – Cierra Burdick knew it wasn’t going to be pretty. 

“I didn’t think it was going to be that ugly,” she said following the United States women’s 3×3 team’s 17-13 loss to Germany in the opening game of pool play Tuesday at the 2024 Paris Olympics. 

Aside from building a 5-0 lead in the early minutes, the Germans significantly outplayed their opponent in every facet of the game. 

“I think we got a little bit hectic,” Rhyne Howard, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2022 WNBA draft, said afterward. “Chemistry definitely came into play.” 

2024 Olympic medals: Who is leading the medal count? Follow along as we track the medals for every sport.

In basketball, especially 3×3, cohesiveness is everything. And the U.S. team – looking to repeat as gold-medal winners with a completely different squad from the Tokyo Games – simply has not had a ton of time playing together. That Howard and Dearica Hamby don’t have as much 3×3 experience as Hailey Van Lith or Burdick doesn’t make the fact they’ve had about two weeks of preparation together any easier. 

“We’re the most inexperienced team here.” Burdick said. “We got a lot of skill, a lot of talent, but that doesn’t win 3×3 games. That’s a prime time example right there.” 

The teams battled back and forth from the point Germany finally put a tally on the board with 6:48 remaining in the 10-minute contest. An and-one from Hambry – one point for the bucket, one for the free throw – tied the proceedings at 11. Germany’s Sonja Greinacher nailed a two to make it 13-11 with 1:52 left and the Germans hung on from there. The dagger came on a Marie Reichert two that gave Germany its biggest lead at 16-12. 

“At the end of the game, honestly, we were winded,” said Van Lith, who led the U.S. with six points and created offense in the pick-and-roll game. “We started playing soft. And they played much harder than us.”

Another difference – and something the Americans will have to improve going forward – was the shooting beyond the arc. Germany went 4-for-10 while the U.S. was 1-for-8. 

The lack of chemistry showed up on both sides of the ball. Multiple defensive miscues – two players either going to the ball or sticking with a screener on a roll – became death sentences. 

For Van Lith, the expectation of defensive help in traditional basketball to the reality is 3×3 defense is a difficult transition. 

“Actions that our bigs and our guards expect help, I feel like that’s when I see it the most,” she said. 

Offensively, the U.S. became stagnant, Burdick said. Too often, they played one-on-one basketball. 

“That’s not going to win 3×3 games,” Burdick said. “Well-oiled machines are 3×3 teams. That wasn’t a well-oiled machine.” 

Howard said the foursome doesn’t want to use the lack of time playing together as an excuse. “We’ve been doing nothing but practicing,” she said. 

When they’re not practicing, they are spending time with one another – a lot of it spent watching film. They will scout and watch their opponents. Coach Jen Rizzotti will throw on the tape of past U.S. tournaments, such as the 2023 World Cup, which the USA won. Howard said they are working on something new every day to expand the repertoire, while Van Lith said they’ve been spending time together nonstop and “getting closer by the day.” 

Van Lith and Burdick, the most experienced on the team, have played together over the past three summers. But Van Lith pointed out that Hambry and Howard are still learning the format; Hamby replaced the injured Cameron Brink five weeks ago. Van Lith said she has been battling an illness since arriving in France and downed five liquid IVs before the game.  

In pool play, all teams play each other once for a total of six games. The squads are seeded No. 1 to No. 6 with the top two receiving byes, with the semifinals and finals following the first elimination round. 

With at least five more games to go, the Americans don’t have to enter panic mode yet. They can treat pool play like practice and focus on growing, Burdick said.

The loss reminded van Lith of a similar situation at last year’s World Cup. The U.S. led Canada 7-1 in its first game and went on to lose 16-13. The group didn’t lose for the remainder of the tournament on its way to standing atop the podium. 

“I’m not scared of this 0-1 start,” van Lith said. “I’ve been here before.”

Now the Americans are banking on history repeating itself.

Jonathan Owens is taking in the 2024 Paris Olympics in every way possible.

Fresh off his flight to Paris, the Chicago Bears safety arrived to watch his wife, Simone Biles, and the U.S. women’s gymnastics team compete in the women’s team final on Tuesday.

Owens, who was excused by the Bears to miss a few days of training camp to be in Paris, was seen on NBC cameras inside the arena donning a Simone Biles T-shirt, as well as a pen and notepad. Naturally, that led to curiosity as to what he was writing down.

Here’s how social media has reacted to Owens being seen at the women’s team final event in Paris:

2024 Olympic medals: Who is leading the medal count? Follow along as we track the medals for every sport.

Social media reacts to Jonathan Owens at Paris Olympics

PARIS — Max Holt was on the USA men’s volleyball team that won the bronze medal in 2016. And like most of his current teammates, he was on the team that flopped at the last Olympics.

The Americans failed to make it out of group play in Tokyo, finishing a disappointing 10th.

‘Very disappointing,’ Holt said. ‘I think everybody kind of had that in the back of their mind. We left a bad taste in our mouth, and absolutely, we’re here to prove that we are a contender.’

So far, so good.

The U.S. improved to 2-0 at the Paris Games with a tense – and pivotal – five-set victory Tuesday over Germany, seizing control of their pool and all but ensuring that the Americans will move into the quarterfinals, regardless of what happens in their final preliminary match against Japan.

2024 Olympic medals: Who is leading the medal count? Follow along as we track the medals for every sport.

Their second win of this tournament looked easy for a while. Except then it wasn’t. After dropping the first two sets, Germany rallied to win the next two and force a deciding fifth set. The U.S. prevailed 25-21, 25-17, 17-25, 20-25, 15-11, winning the final set largely because of a 6-0 run that shifted momentum that had built in Germany’s favor. That run was ignited by Holt serving consecutive aces.

‘I just felt like we needed a little something extra there,’ he said. ‘ … This was a great test for our team. In big Olympic moments, this was huge to keep that poise, keep that composure.’

Big-picture, these two opening victories (the U.S. swept Argentina on Saturday) have indeed been huge for an experienced national team that showed up in Paris with the performance in Tokyo still fresh on minds.

‘We wanted to do better,’ said U.S. coach John Speraw, who has also returned in his role from the Rio and Tokyo Games, ‘and as I’ve said in a bunch of interviews, I want that for them. Because they’ve been so successful. The last Olympics didn’t go great, but all these other tournaments that they’ve been so successful in, I think they wanted to come back and have equal success here. …

‘There’s bigger things here. When you represent the United States of America, it’s not about going out and winning just another volleyball tournament. This isn’t just another volleyball tournament.’

So how are their chances? Looking better.

Consistency has been an issue of late for this U.S. men’s team. But the Americans are still ranked sixth in the world, viewed as possible contenders in Paris, while not favorites over current powers like Poland, Italy or host France. Even in their preliminary pool, Japan is ranked third ahead of them.

So holding on to beat Germany – which upset Japan in five sets in their Olympic opener – could prove critical. Volleyball changed its format in this Games, putting four teams in three different pools, rather than the previous setup of two six-team groups. While that has meant more rest time between matches, it has also upped the significance of each preliminary match.

Tuesday’s result moved the U.S. atop their pool with five points (a five-set victory is worth two points, as opposed to three for winning in three or four sets). Germany has three. Japan (one) and Argentina (zero) square off Wednesday in the second Olympic match for each.

Ultimately, the top two teams in the pool will advance automatically, while the third-place finisher would have a chance, depending on how it stacks up against the third-place teams in other pools.

Even if it isn’t official yet, the Americans can expect to keep playing into the medal round.

‘That was a goal, right?” Speraw said. ‘But we’ve got aspirations to do great things in this tournament. Winning matters. Let’s keep it going.’

While the U.S. women’s volleyball team has medaled in each of the past four Olympics, including a gold in Tokyo, the American men – with notable exceptions of gold in 2008 and bronze in 1992 and 2016 – have slipped a bit since winning back-to-back gold medals in 1984 and 1988.

The goal here in Paris is clear. And it’s closer than it was a few days ago.

‘We’re here to get gold,’ Holt said. ‘That has been our mission.’

Reach Gentry Estes at gestes@gannett.com and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) @Gentry_Estes.

The Chinese swimmers doping saga has taken another twist.

Two more swimmers tested positive for trace amounts of an anabolic steroid in late 2022 but were cleared after the Chinese Anti Doping Agency (CHINADA) determined the source was most likely contaminated meat from hamburgers, according to a report from The New York Times published Tuesday. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) later confirmed the basic details of the report in a statement.

According to the Times, one of the swimmers, Tang Muhan, is on China’s team at the 2024 Paris Olympics and expected to compete Thursday. The other, He Junyi, was also among the 23 swimmers who tested positive in the initial doping case, which has sent ripple effects throughout the anti-doping community.

In that case, the swimmers tested positive for banned heart medication trimetazidine but a Chinese investigation found that the source was most likely contamination from a hotel kitchen.

CHINADA did not immediately reply to a message seeking comment Tuesday but told the Times that it has always ‘adhered to a firm stance of ‘zero tolerance’ for doping’ and complied with anti-doping rules.

2024 Olympic medals: Who is leading the medal count? Follow along as we track the medals for every sport.

WADA painted the Times’ report as part of a broader effort by the United States to attack China.

‘The politicization of Chinese swimming continues with this latest attempt by the media in the United States to imply wrongdoing on the part of WADA and the broader anti-doping community,’ WADA said in a statement. ‘As we have seen over recent months, WADA has been unfairly caught in the middle of geopolitical tensions between superpowers but has no mandate to participate in that.’

According WADA, the two swimmers tested positive for ‘trace amounts’ of the anabolic steroid metandienone in October 2022. The Times reported that He and Tang were training together at a national team facility in Beijing when they decided to stop at a restaurant for french fries, Coca-Cola and hamburgers − the latter of which were later determined to be the souce of the steroid.

WADA said the swimmers’ positive tests occurred around the same time that a Chinese shooter and Chinese BMX racer also tested positive for the same steroid, prompting a broader investigation by CHINADA into meat contamination.

‘Following its investigation, CHINADA concluded that the four cases were most likely linked to meat contamination and, in late 2023, closed the cases without asserting a violation, with the athletes having remained provisionally suspended throughout that time,’ WADA said in its statement.

The bigger issue, in critics’ eyes, is that this case was not publicly disclosed at the time by CHINADA, as required under anti-doping rules even in cases where contamination is a possibility. CHINADA also did not disclose the positive tests by the 23 swimmers. And WADA did not challenge either finding, nor does it appear to have punished CHINADA for failing to disclose the positive tests.

WADA’s inaction has led to a brutal, messy fight between high-powered sports organizations, including the International Olympic Committee and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

USADA and its chief executive officer, Travis Tygart, have repeatedly and consistently ripped WADA for what it has portrayed as an attempt to sweep the Chinese doping cases under the rug. WADA has since sniped back, and the IOC has come to its defense, even going so far as to amend the host city contract that will allow the U.S. to host the 2034 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Tuesday’s report will likely only increase the ongoing interest in possible Chinese doping by U.S. lawmakers and law enforcement. Members of Congress held a hearing on the matter earlier this month, and the Department of Justice is reportedly investigating the initial 23 positive tests under the auspices of the Rodchenkov Act, which allows U.S. authorities to pursue criminal charges in doping cases that impact U.S. athletes.

Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on social media @Tom_Schad.

PARIS — A year ago at this time, Taylor Fritz was enjoying one of his best stretches of the tennis season. He won the title at the Atlanta Open, then backed it up with a semifinal appearance the following week in Washington, D.C.

Those back-to-back efforts earned him 430 points in the world rankings, which is the coin of the realm in pro tennis. Nearly everything from sponsorship bonuses to qualifying for the year-end championships to seeding at the Grand Slams is tied to those ranking points, which are compiled on a rolling 52-week basis.

And when Fritz returns to the U.S. next week, those 430 points are all going to be gone from his ranking. Simply because he decided to play the Olympics, which don’t award any points.

“Yeah, that hurts,” said Fritz, who will drop from No. 11 to No. 13 as a result of being unable to defend any of those points. “But it is what it is.”

But given the circumstances, he wouldn’t have it any other way.

2024 Olympic medals: Who is leading the medal count? Follow along as we track the medals for every sport.

Fritz said there was no particular result here in Paris that would justify him deciding to sacrifice those points. He came here for entirely different reasons.

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But still, a long Olympic run here would be a nice reward for someone who has carried the banner of American men’s tennis the last couple years with unimpeachable class, including his decision to play in Paris while three of his countrymen – Ben Shelton, Francis Tiafoe and Sebastian Korda – all decided to stay home and get ready for the hard court season.

Fritz took a big step toward that kind of result on Tuesday when he beat Great Britain’s Jack Draper 6-7, 6-3, 6-2, advancing to the final 16.

“I don’t know where I’m going to be in four years,” Fritz said, explaining his decision to prioritize the Olympics. “I’m going to be 30. I hope I’m going to play in (the Los Angeles Olympics), and even if I do, I wouldn’t want that to be my first Olympics. I kind of want to get this experience and really give myself the absolute best chance to perform in LA. I think that’s going to be a great opportunity for me, and being here is a great experience for that.

“I’m kind of just looking at the big picture and obviously representing my country, but I understand why some of the other guys would want to try to play those tournaments (in the U.S.) and pick up the points.”

What softens the blow for Fritz a bit is that he’s in the midst of a very good, consistent season. In addition to picking up titles in Delray Beach and Eastbourne, he reached the quarterfinals at the Australian Open and Wimbledon, and the semifinals of the Madrid Masters.

That puts him at No. 9 in the so-called “race,” which is the calendar-year points calculation to determine which eight players qualify for the ATP Finals.

“I’m in an OK spot right now,” he said. “I think it’s easier to look at it that way.”

But the big-serving Fritz did raise the possibility of the ATP making some adjustments in the future to account for players like himself who just have the poor timing of losing a lot of points in an Olympic year. It’s an issue that will have particular salience after this event, which had a number of top players either opt out due to injury or choose to play in Atlanta and Washington. The bottom line is that the field in Paris is not as strong as it could be, and though there are some legitimate reasons for that, it’s true that the importance of Olympic tennis is often in the eye of the beholder.

Other than national pride and personal ambition to win a medal, there’s no tangible incentive to play this tournament. If anything, there’s a disincentive. Perhaps it’s time for some accommodations to be made that would actually strengthen the field rather than weaken it. Whether that’s deferring the points drop by a year or letting people keep half the points they’d lose for playing the Olympics, it’s time for some better ideas.

“I don’t think you need to do points, but if you don’t, players that have points should probably be protected in some way,” Fritz said. “It’s a tough situation because obviously you’re motivated to play for your country, but in the end it can affect your ranking and your career by coming here. It’s not, I guess, the most ideal system we have set in place, but I don’t really have a clear way to fix it.”

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Since James Naismith’s fateful decision to hang a peach basket on the wall at a YMCA training school in western Massachusetts in 1891, basketball has been a quintessentially American sport.

For fans in the United States and worldwide, the sport is overwhelmingly viewed as a five-on-five game, whether it’s in the NBA, in college or in international competition.

At the Olympics, though, there’s a different format.

Three-on-three basketball (commonly shortened to 3×3 basketball) is a relative newcomer to the Olympics, debuting at the 2020 Tokyo Games in 2021. It’s back at the 2024 Paris Olympics, with the United States competing on both the men’s and women’s side.

2024 Olympic medals: Who is leading the medal count? Follow along as we track the medals for every sport.

Though millions of American viewers tuning into the Olympics are intimately familiar with five-on-five basketball after years of consuming it, the 3×3 game is significantly different, from the rules to the pacing to the strategy.

Here’s what you need to know about 3×3 basketball, including rules, format and the Team USA rosters that will be vying for gold medals in France:

3×3 basketball court size, dimensions

Among the myriad differences between 3×3 and five-on-five basketball is the size of the playing surface.

While traditional, five-on-five basketball is played on a 94-foot-long court, 3×3 basketball uses a condensed court that’s 36.1 feet in length and 49.2 feet in width, with a single hoop at one end and an end line on the other.

Though the point values are different, the arc behind which players can earn an extra point with a made shot is the same — 22.1 feet from the center of the hoop.

Why is 3×3 basketball halfcourt?

With four fewer players on the floor at a given time (two for each team), the court doesn’t need to be nearly as big as it is for five-on-five basketball.

For some watching the Paris Olympics, it’s a comfortably familiar setup, as pick-up basketball — where 3×3 basketball can trace its roots — is often only halfcourt, with players bringing the ball back to the top of the key between possessions

Rules for 3×3 basketball

The basics of 3×3 and five-on-five basketball are largely similar, with the same rules governing fundamental elements of the sport like ball-handling, along with the same characteristics of the court – a lane, a free-throw line, a 10-foot rim and a semi-circular arc behind which players can try to make a shot worth an additional point.

Beyond that, the two sports differ in easily noticeable and perhaps jarring ways.

As the name of the sport makes clear, there are only three players per team allowed on the court at a time in 3×3 basketball, with each team permitted only one substitute for a four-player roster that’s one-third the size of an Olympic five-on-five basketball team. The substitutions are less formalized, too, with players simply tagging in during a dead ball rather than going to the scorers’ table.

The ball is slightly smaller in 3×3 basketball, weighing 620 grams, the same as the balls used for FIBA-sanctioned five-on-five competition, but is 72.39 centimeters in diameter, compared to the 74.93 centimeters of a five-on-five ball.

The defensive team can win possession with a defensive rebound, steal or block. When a defensive player gets control of the ball inside the arc, they need to dribble it out or pass to a teammate beyond the arc before their team can attempt a shot.

Scoring in 3×3 basketball is different, too, with shots from inside the arc worth one point and shots from beyond it worth two. Free throws, like in five-on-five basketball, count for one point.

How long is a 3×3 basketball game?

Rather than the FIBA-regulated four 10-minute quarters, 3×3 basketball is much shorter.

The first team to 21 points wins the game. If neither team makes it to that threshold in the allotted 10 minutes of game time, the team with the most points is declared the victor. If the teams are tied in that instance, there’s an overtime period. The first team to score two points in overtime wins, with the team that started the game on defense getting the first possession of the extra period.

Like it five-on-five counterpart, 3×3 basketball has a shot clock, but it’s just 12 seconds, half the time of a regulation 24-second shot clock used in NBA and FIBA competition.

3×3 basketball Olympics winners

In its debut as an Olympic sport at the 2020 Tokyo Games, Latvia won the gold medal in the men’s competition while the United States won on the women’s side with a team featuring a quartet of WNBA players — Kelsey Plum, Jackie Young, Allisha Gray and Stefanie Dolson. Two of the players from that American team, Plum and Young, are now on Team USA for five-on-five basketball at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Team USA 3×3 basketball rosters

The Americans will be making their debut in men’s 3×3 basketball at the 2024 Paris Olympics after failing to qualify three years ago while the women will look to successfully defend their gold medal, albeit with an entirely different team.

The women’s team features a pair of active WNBA players — Rhyne Howard of the Atlanta Dream and Dearica Hamby of the Los Angeles Sparks — while the men’s team is headlined by former national college player of the year and NBA lottery pick Jimmer Fredette.

Here are the Team USA rosters for 3×3 men’s and women’s basketball at the 2024 Paris Olympics, along with the heights of each player:

Men

Jimmer Fredette, 6-foot-2
Dylan Travis, 6-3
Canyon Barry, 6-6
Kareem Maddox, 6-8

Women

Hailey Van Lith, 5-9
Rhyne Howard, 6-2
Cierra Burdick, 6-2
Dearica Hamby, 6-3

Editor’s note: Follow Olympic gymnastics live results, scores and highlights as Simone Biles and the U.S. women’s team compete in the team final.

Here’s what you need to know about artistic gymnastics at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

When did artistic gymnastics become an Olympic sport?

Artistic gymnastics, or gymnastics as it’s traditionally known, was part of the first “modern” Olympics in 1896, and has been part of every Summer Games since. It has undergone some changes – rope climbing was once an event, and women weren’t allowed to compete in the Olympics until 1928 – but it has had largely the same format for the last 60 years. Men compete on six apparatuses – floor exercise, pommel horse, still rings, vault, parallel bars and high bar – while women compete on four – vault, uneven bars, balance beam, floor exercise.

How does Olympic artistic gymnastics work?

A gymnastics routine gets two scores: One for difficulty, also known as the D score or start value, and one for execution. Every gymnastics skill has a numerical value, and the D score is the sum total of the skills in a routine. The execution score, or E score, reflects how well the skills were done. A gymnast starts with a 10.0, and deductions for flaws and form errors are taken from there.

2024 Olympic medals: Who is leading the medal count? Follow along as we track the medals for every sport.

Add the D and E scores together, and that’s your total for an apparatus. (Vault scores will always be higher because it’s a single skill.)

Every gymnast goes through qualifying. The top 24 all-around gymnasts, with a limit of two per country, advance to the all-around final, where scoring starts over. The top eight gymnasts on each apparatus, again with a two-per-country limit, advance to the event finals. Scoring starts over there, too.

For the 12 countries in the team competition, they will put four of their five gymnasts up on each event in qualifying and can drop their lowest score. You’ll sometimes hear this referred to as “5-4-3.” The top eight teams advance to the final where, you guessed it, scoring starts over. 

In the team final, however, countries compete three gymnasts on each event and must count all three scores. Also known as three-up, three-count. Have to count a fall, and your chances at the gold are probably gone. Count two or three, and you can forget about a medal of any color.

Who are the top Team USA athletes in artistic gymnastics?

Simone, Simone and Simone again. Simone Biles returned to competition last year for the first time since the Tokyo Olympics, where she was forced to withdraw from the team final and all but one event final because of “the twisties.” In her return, she looked spectacular, winning her sixth all-around title and becoming the most-decorated gymnast, male or female, with 37 medals at the world championships and Olympics.

So long as Biles is on her game, she will be favored for golds in the team competition, all-around, vault, balance beam and floor exercise. If she’s healthy, don’t count out reigning Olympic champion Suni Lee.

Fred Richard and Asher Hong lead a young but very talented U.S. men’s team. Their bronze at last year’s world championships was their first medal at a worlds or the Olympics since 2014, and the team only gets stronger with the return of two-time national champion Brody Malone, who missed last year with a knee injury.

What’s the international landscape in Olympic artistic gymnastics?

Russia is the only team that could give the American women and the Japanese and Chinese men a real fight, winning both team golds in Tokyo. But the Russians won’t be in Paris, banned from the Olympics as punishment for their invasion of Ukraine.

That means the gold is the U.S. women’s to lose. Even without Simone Biles, who was taking time off after Tokyo, the Americans won their sixth consecutive team title at the world championships in 2022. With Biles back last year, the U.S. women made it seven in a row, beating Brazil by more than two points. In a sport where medals can come down to hundredths of a point, that’s a big gap.

On the men’s side, Japan and China are in a class ahead of everyone else.

In the individual events, the only woman who comes close to Biles is Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade, who finished second to the American at last year’s world championships. But Andrade would likely have to be perfect and Biles would need to make a couple of mistakes for the Brazilian to deny Biles a second all-around title.

Japan’s Daiki Hashimoto, who has added the last two world titles to his all-around gold from Tokyo, is the one to beat in the men’s all-around. His toughest competition will likely be from teammate Kenta Chiba and Ukraine’s Ilia Kovtun, but Fred Richard has a shot at the podium if they are clean.