RIO DE JANEIRO -- So this is what the year-in, year-out relentless talking about chasing perfection that starts at the top with Martha Karolyi and trickles on down to every gymnast on the five-woman U.S. Olympic team can do: Sometimes, crazy as it sounds, the idea actually does start animating every goal, permeating everyone's thoughts, shaping what their dreams look like, until they get to the point where here they are in Rio, and near-perfection is literally, actually coming true.
With three days down in the Olympic women's gymnastics competition and three days of individual events to go, the U.S. team is halfway to a perfect sweep of all six of the available gold medals that will be awarded here in Rio, a pie-in-the-sky sounding thought that nobody was really talking that much about before these Games began.
Now look: The U.S. defended its team gold on Tuesday. Simone Biles and Aly Raisman finished 1-2 in the individual all-around on Thursday night, extending the American team's hold on that title to four straight Olympics.
Biles -- already the most decorated female gymnast in history - has also qualified first for the individual events finals in the vault, floor exercise and beam and could take gold in all three. Teammate Madison Kocian has the highest qualifying score in the remaining event, the uneven bars, where she's a reigning world co-champion, and Gabby Douglas qualified third-best in that event, just a tenth of a point behind her. If Biles would falter on floor or beam, Raisman and Laurie Hernandez were the second-best qualifiers on those events behind her, respectively.
But could they really run the table? Finish perfect? Pull off a clean sweep of six golds in six events?
"That would just be crazy," Biles admitted.
Notice she also didn't rule it out.
"It's mind over matter," Raisman said, describing her philosophy about she frames what's possible and how she navigates doubt. "If you believe you can or you can't, you probably will."
Both of them looked a little weary Friday morning when they met the press. The wakeup call and ride to the Olympic main press center for their 9:30 a.m. session with Kocian, Douglas and Hernandez had to feel like it came early for them. It was the morning after an emotional night that Biles repeatedly called the best day of her 19-year-old life, but now the just-crowned Olympic all-around champion sat on the edge of the dais, trying to stay off her feet. Down the line, Raisman was re-living what she called her "redemptive" performance for the silver medal and how gratified she felt about her 4-for-4 night without a bobble in her routines, but she also sat in a chair, conserving energy.
If they were exhausted, they wouldn't admit it.
"I think if you ask [multi-event swimmer] Michael Phelps, he would say the same thing -- you know you have less left to do, so you just keep going," said Biles.
If Biles, the reigning three-time world champion, does sweep all three of her remaining events, and Kocian's, Hernandez's, Raisman's and Douglas' coming performances match their qualifying scores, the U.S. team could walk away from these Olympics with a total of 14 medals scattered among the five-woman team. That's extraordinary.
So far, they have hit all 20 routines they've thrown. If they go 7-for-7 in the coming three days, pushing them to 27-for-27 at this competition, that "Final Five" nickname they've chosen for themselves -- partly as an homage to 73-year-old Karolyi, who is retiring after Rio -- might seem too pedestrian to capture it all.
It could be a long time before the sport sees a team as deep and talented and immune to pressure as this team has been.
Told Friday they are making this look "easy", Biles -- ever the cold-eyed pragmatist -- looked at the TV reporter who made the statement and said, "Well, that's our job," crinkling her nose a little as if it's so obvious. "If we make it look tough," she added, "I think it would be a problem."
Everyone laughed.
Raisman is right, of course, to say the team's relentless pursuit of perfection is a mindset as much as happy accident of timing that put them all together like this at the same time and place in history. Both she and Aimee Boorman, Biles' coach, have paid homage again and again the past two days to Karolyi's tone-setting guidance. Boorman told a story about how when Biles got to the beam Thursday night, the most landmine-strewn of all the events, and she was trailing Russia's Aliya Mustafina by a few tenths, "I was thinking, 'JUST DON'T FALL'" Boorman admitted. "But Simone just looked at me and said, 'I got this.' That's something Martha does such a great job with them. She teaches them that attitude throughout their training. She tells them, 'How many times have you done these sets?'"
Now they're at the point they repeat it all reflexively -- the mantra, their sets, the all-for-one attitude that Karolyi also insisted on. As Mihai Brestyan, Raisman's longtime personal coach, said, "You have all the time the biggest expectations. But then here, you seen it's happening!" As Raisman finished her final event, the floor, Thursday night, she could see him out of the corner of her eye, pumping his fists and starting to cry.
After the medals by Biles and Raisman were won, it was actually a little humorous Thursday night to see Karolyi -- ever the teacher, forever a coach -- lingering in the nearly empty mixed-zone press area long after the all-around event was over, energetically explaining the perfection mantra to an overseas TV crew who asked her how the U.S. program became this good. It was like watching a preacher who loves to spread the Word. The longer Karolyi has preached chasing perfection, the more it has seemed to come true. Sixteen years ago when she started imprinting the idea on the drifting U.S. program, it seemed like a buzzword she'd dusted off from the days she coached Nadia Comenci to a gold medals and perfect 10s at the 1976 Games. No one says that anymore.
Karolyi likes to say, "Perfection is an attitude, not just an act." Right now, no team at these Games looks as perfect as this U.S. gymnastics team. Appreciate them before they're gone. It will be fascinating to see if they can keep it up for four more events.