Though television brings all the athletes up close, amid the actual competition on the floor they can get lost, and shine helps highlight and distinguish each girl. "When the judges are there, every little thing counts," said Samantha Peszek, a member of the 2008 Olympic team who is working for NBC's digital and social content team for this summer's games.
The crystals also serve to emphasize the aesthetic aspect of a sport that has become evermore focused on athleticism and tricks — to its detriment, some argue. In a way, the fanciness and drama of the leos can be seen as an attempt to correct a perceived imbalance between artistic power and physical power: telegraphing that idea that while "our skill level says one thing, our dress style says another."
The Olympic stadium "is the biggest stage of our lives" Ms. Liukin, the 2008 Olympic gymnast and current NBC Olympic commentator, said. Note the emphasis on "stage." It may seem reductive to compare Olympic gymnastics to, say, a Vegas arena, but the sartorial theory behind both is effectively the same: Use the bling to stand out.
Though other national teams have also begun to bedazzle, none have reached the extent of the Americans, who have made it their signature.
Sparkle, sparkle, sparkle
One of the odder things about interviewing an elite female gymnast is how quickly a conversation about the sacrifices and difficulties of her sport can suddenly become all about sparkle. It is a word that comes up again and again.
"Obviously, sparkles are not en element in the scoring. But it's part of the 'look good, feel good, do good aspect.'" Ms. Peszek said. "It's a very important part of the sport. It may sound trivial, but what you wear really matters. For some girls, it's why they got into t he sport."
Photo Aly Raisman, left, and Simone Biles watch the 2016 P&G Gymnastics Championships in June in Missouri. Credit Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images
As the athletes and their coaches point out, elite gymnasts who start training seriously at a very young age often don't get to go to prom or other typical adolescent parties because they are always in the gym; it has become a cliché of the sport to refer to the Olympic competition leo as the gymnast's "prom dress."
Gymnasts cannot wear jewelry during competition save for a pair of stud earrings, so the crystals also act as a stand-in for other more traditional adornment. "We're hard-core athletes, but we all love fashion, too," said Ms. Liukin.
Aly Raisman, the captain of the United States team in Rio and London, is famous among her peers for her interest in style, especially evening wear.
Each Olympian now receives a package with eight competition leotards and 12 training leotards. Each is custom-fit to her body, and on the open retail market the heavily crystal-studded competition leos would cost an average of $1,200 (more than many prom dresses).
Though Ms. Karolyi has the final word on the team competition, the gymnasts have input and are free to choose their own leotard for the individual events.
During the 2012 London games, for example, the team voted together to wear the red Mystique style with a stylized crystal pattern across the body during the team competition. "It was like a ball gown," Ms. Liukin said.
Though it may seem as if so many stones could inhibit performance, Ms. McKeown said that the additional weight is incidental. GK also makes "couture" leotards that have 15,000 crystals each, she said. "You wouldn't compete in those." The company has a fleet of state-of-the-art machines that cost over $50,000 each and use lasers and robotic technology to apply the stones to the fabric.
Meanwhile, Swarovski has been working to change the makeup and cut of their crystals so that they will be ever lighter to accommodate demand. According to Alexander Wellhoefer, senior vice president for North America of Swarovski Professional, they have adapted machinery from the computer chip industry to develop new techniques for stone application in evermore complex and precise patterns.
This autumn, Mr. Wellhoefer said, Swarovski will introduce a new crystal product, called a Concise Crystal, that is 50 percent lighter than previous stones, allowing for even more encrustation and refractory gleam.
"We're in a crystal arms race," Mr. Wellhoefer said.
The question now is whether we have reached the crystal saturation point when it comes to competition, or whether there is even further to go. "I ask myself that every tournament," Ms. McKeown said. "We were doing a fitting with the girls the other day, and we all said, 'Can you imagine what the leos are going to look like in four years if we keep going in this direction?'"
It may seem, given Ms. Karolyi's upcoming retirement, that we are at a natural turning point in the sparkle saga. But if Ms. Biles and her teammates, all known crystalphiles, perform as expected while in full sparkle mode, chances are good that the millions of young fans who are watching will internalize the connection without ever entirely realizing why.
After all, when asked if there was ever a gymnast who tended, say, more to the minimalist Helmut Lang school of leotards than to the fairy princess Marchesa look, Jordyn Wieber, a member of the gold medal 2012 team who is now a student at U.C.L.A. and manager of the gymnastics team (which is known for the "creative backs" of their leotards), hemmed and hawed and thought for a while.
"Well, I guess some girls like more sparkle than others … " she offered, her voice trailing off. But, she added more decisively, "I have never met a gymnast who doesn't love rhinestones."
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