Simone Biles wins Olympic gold with the vault named after her : NPR

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PARIS — In 2021, when the gymnast Simone Biles first began to publicly perform the vault that now bears her name — the Biles II — her ability to land the incredibly difficult routine awed the world of gymnastics.

But soon after, Biles was robbed of her chance to perform it at the Tokyo Olympics when she was beset by a sudden and unexplainable loss of her ability to control her body through the air known as the “twisties.” The affliction forced her to withdraw from most of her events that summer, including the vault final.

On Saturday, the dream deferred finally became reality. In the Olympic vault final, the Biles II helped to win its namesake her third gold medal (and counting) of the Summer Games in Paris.

And it may have been its last ever appearance by her in competition, Biles said afterward, when asked if the event had been the final vault of her career. 

“Is this my last? Definitely the Yurchenko double pike. I mean, I kind of nailed that one,” Biles said. “Never say never. The next Olympics is at home. So you just never know.”

The routine was one of two vaults Biles performed in the event, in which final scores are calculated by taking the average of two different routines. The Biles II, the higher-scoring of the two, looked like this: Biles sprinted down the runway, then cartwheeled into a backward handspring onto the vaulting table, an approach called a Yurchenko. Then, she pushed off so high into the air that she was able to complete two full flips as she held out her flexed legs in a pike position.

The momentum she generates is so great that she rarely sticks the landing, more often taking a step or two as she did Saturday.

The vault, also known as the Yurchenko double pike, was officially named after Biles when she became the first gymnast to land it at an international competition in 2023.

In gymnastics, a final score is based both on the difficulty of the gymnast’s attempted routine and the quality of her execution. The difficulty of Biles’s vault is currently the highest in the women’s sport, worth 6.4 points — which helps to offset the fractions of a point lost due to an extra step.

On Saturday, her Biles II vault earned a 15.7 after a tenth of a point was deducted when she stepped one foot slightly out of bounds. Her second vault earned a score of 14.9, giving her a final score of 15.3 — a third of a point more than her closest competitor, Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade.

Andrade, widely considered the world’s second-best gymnast, had won gold at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 after Biles withdrew from the event, then bested Biles in vault at last year’s World Championships. Saturday’s silver medal is Andrade’s third medal of these Olympics, after she won silver in the individual all-around event and helped lead Brazil to a team bronze earlier in the week.

“I’ve never had an athlete that close, so it definitely put me on my toes,” Biles said Thursday. “It brought out the best athlete in myself, so I’m excited and proud to compete with her.”

Another American gymnast, Jade Carey, won the bronze medal with a final score of 14.466.

Biles has two events remaining in Paris, the balance beam and floor exercise finals. They represent an opportunity to match her historic medal total from the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro, in which she won four golds and a bronze as a 19-year-old.

As her 2024 Olympic run nears its end, Biles has already begun to field questions about whether she plans to retire from the sport. At 27 years old, she is already older than almost all of her competitors. By the time the 2028 Olympics begin, she will be 31.

For now, she is still having fun, she said Saturday. “Not many people in the world can do it to this level. Once we’re out here, the floor is our stage, so it just feels so freeing for us, because we’re in our element, we’re having fun, we’re doing what we love to do,” she said.

“But at a certain point, as we get older, it does get a little bit more scary. We’re more aware of what we’re doing, what can happen,” she said. “So our consciousness is there. But it’s always fun.”