History made: U.S. women's gymnastics wins gold in dominant fashion at Olympics

The U.S. women's gymnastics team obliterated the rest of the field with an unmatched eight-point win to clinch team gold on Tuesday

By Robby Kalland

& Matt Norlander

Aug 9, 2016 at 6:11 pm ET • 1 min read

The United States women's gymnastics team gave a performance for the ages with a dominant showing on Tuesday to beat Russia and China for the gold medal in the team finals at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, Laurie Hernandez, Gabby Douglas and Madison Kocian -- who dubbed themselves "The Final Five" after their win -- put together a flawless meet, posting the high score in all four rotations on Tuesday to live up to their hype coming in as one of, if not the, greatest women's gymnastics teams of all time.

The 8.209 point victory by the United States (185.238) over Russia (175.279) is the largest margin of victory at a major gymnastics meet under the current scoring system. In the four previous Olympics this century, the margin of victory has not exceeded 1.5 points. They also became the first American women's team to win back-to-back gold medals at the Olympics.

Russia (174.620) just sneaked past Great Britain for bronze.

It's such a commanding victory for the Americans that the men's and women's basketball teams -- both overwhelming favorites to win gold -- will have a hard time matching the dominance. Consider that in previous international events, the United States' women won by 4.08 points at the 2011 World Championships, 5.07 points at the 2012 Olympics, and 6.7 and 5.2 points at the two most recent world competitions.

Simply put, a winning margin of 8.2 is remarkable. Every other Olympic competition since 2000 has seen a difference of less than two points between gold and silver. That makes this the widest margin of victory in the modern scoring system of gymnastics.

Biles, regarded as arguably the best gymnast ever, was the only member of the team to compete in all four rotations for the United States, posting massive scores on the vault (15.933) and floor exercise (15.800). Raisman and Hernandez each participated in three events -- vault, balance beam and floor exercise -- for the Americans.

Douglas, the reigning Olympic all-around champion, and Kocian only competed in the uneven bars rotation, but both posted huge scores -- 15.766 for Douglas and 15.933 for Kocian -- in their lone event of the afternoon.

The team has achieved their goal to win gold -- and do so in dominant fashion -- but the competition will continue for The Final Five soon. Biles and Raisman will be back in action on Thursday for the women's all-around finals and event finals are set to begin on Sunday.