It has been 18 years since elite gymnastics adopted its open-ended scoring system, an adaptation introduced not a moment too soon, as it would be rather boring to watch Simone Biles score repeated perfect 10s over nine years of international competitions across little more than a decade. At her third consecutive Olympic Summer Games, Biles earned two individual gold medals and a silver medal on floor and cemented yet another gold for Team USA. Pushing 30 years old with no sign of peaking, Biles, now widely regarded as the greatest in the sport of all time, has transformed the sport with her sheer escalation of difficulty and entrenched America’s dominance not just in competition but also in judging.

The star-studded stands in Paris also saw the shadow of what once ruled the sport. Nadia Comaneci, the legendary Romanian who scored the first perfect 10 at the 1976 Games, has lived in America since escaping her then-communist homeland as a young woman, marrying an American, and becoming a citizen. But despite her stateside status as an international celebrity and philanthropist, Comaneci was in Paris as champion of Romania’s attempt to restore its former glory.