Follow-up: U.S. Goes 1-2 in Women's Floor Final at Gymnastics Worlds as Claire Pease Wins Gold With 13.866 and Reese Esponda Takes Silver With 13.566
The 2026 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships reached their final day on October 25 at Rotterdam Ahoy in Rotterdam, Netherlands. In the women's floor exercise final, Claire Pease of the United States won gold with 13.866, and her teammate Reese Esponda took silver with 13.566, a one-two finish that closed out the championships for the U.S. women.
Pease performed last in the final. According to USA Today, reporting on site, she stepped out of bounds on one tumbling pass and wobbled on a wolf turn, but her difficulty was high enough to hold off Esponda by 0.300 points. Esponda, who had led qualifying with 13.633, scored 13.566 despite hops on her landings; Simone Biles applauded from the stands as she finished.
The floor title is Pease's third medal of these championships, after a team silver and a vault silver on the first day of apparatus finals, and her second individual medal. Esponda, also a member of the silver-medal team, added an individual silver. U.S. all-around champion Skye Blakely finished sixth on balance beam on Sunday and leaves Rotterdam with four medals — all-around gold, team silver, and bronzes on vault and uneven bars — having hit all 14 of her routines over eight days without a major error.
In Sunday's earlier finals, Kaylia Nemour of Algeria won balance beam over China's Zhang Qingying on an execution tiebreak after both scored 14.566, China's Zou Jingyuan won parallel bars, and Armenia's Artur Davtyan won vault, as GSM reported earlier on closing day. The women's floor final was the last women's event of the championships.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：美国体操选手 Claire Pease 在2026年美国杯比赛后登上领奖台（资料图）。摄影：SpiritedMichelle，CC BY-SA 4.0，来源：Wikimedia Commons / Photo: U.S. gymnast Claire Pease on the podium at the 2026 American Cup (file photo). Photo by SpiritedMichelle, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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