Rebeca Andrade and her teammates have made gymnastics history…

The 24-year-old Brazilian gymnast and Olympic gold medalist and her Brazil teammates have made history at the 2023 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, becoming the first South American team to ever win a medal in the team competition.

The Brazilian team claimed the silver medal with a score of 165.530, coming in 2.199 points behind the United States.

Brazil’s score in the qualifying round had already qualified them for Paris 2024 as a team.

Led by Simone Biles, the U.S. took the gold and their seventh straight team title.

France completed the podium, coming in third. But even on the same stage as arguably the greatest gymnast of all time, Simone Biles, the Brazilian team, led by 2022 world all-around champion Rebeca Andrade, managed to shine bright.

Andrade, the first Brazilian female gymnast to medal at an Olympic Games, clinched the medal for the Brazilian team with a clutch vault. But it was the team’s steady performances that elevated them to a second-place finish no one was expecting and few had even dared hope for.

But Brazilian’s Andrade, Jade Barbosa, Flavia Saraiva, Lorrane Oliviera and Julia Soares were more than happy with making their own kind of history.

In 2019, the Brazilian team missed qualifying for the Olympics. Now they’re silver medalists at the 2023 World Championships and they are going to the 2024 Paris Games. Not just that, they’ll have a chance to do more than just represent their country. This Brazilian team, with much less institutional support than the US, has proven it can compete with the best teams in the world.

“Today we have accomplished something we have worked for for more than five Olympic cycles,” said Barbosa. “It’s difficult to put into words: this is something Brazil has always strived for,” she added “I did it not just for this generation but for all the generations.”