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PARIS – Simone Biles left nothing to chance in the vault final, leaping high off the table and performing her signature eponymous double backflip in the pike position.
It’s called Biles II, the hardest jump in the world and is named after her because she was the first to ever do it in a competition. Most people won’t even try it in practice because of the risk of missing it.
With a difficulty rating of 6.400, the highest in women’s gymnastics, Biles sometimes calls it her “big guns” that can lock down competitions right away. In this case, her execution was nearly flawless (9.4) and gave her a whopping 15.700 on her first attempt.
At that point it was all but over. She added a Cheng (5.6 difficulty) on her second attempt, which yielded a 14.900.
Her average jump over two distances was 15.300.
That was enough to sweep her way to a 10th Olympic medal and seventh gold by winning the individual vault event here Saturday. It was her third gold in three tries here in Paris. She won gold in the team event on Tuesday and in the all-around on Thursday.
Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade, who fought Biles in the all-around competition on Thursday, took silver with an average of 14.966. American Jade Carey took bronze with an average of 14.466.
Biles qualified ahead of Andrade at .700 and had a .900 advantage in difficulty, making her very hard to beat. Once she nailed Biles II, it was a matter of simple math. No one else in the competition attempted a vault with a difficulty above 5.600. Most were at 5.000. It was a competition for silver.
No one else in the competition landed a single jump as high as Biles’ average. Andrade’s 15.100 on the Cheng was the closest.
In fact, there has never been anyone like Simone Biles in gymnastics, let alone on vault, the perfect outlet for her athletic abilities.
With her 10 Olympic medals, Biles now ranks third all-time among female gymnasts, behind Larisa Latynina who won 18 at the 1956, 1960 and 1964 Games and Vera Caslavska of the former Czechoslovakia who won 11 in 1964 and 1968.
Biles won four golds and a bronze medal at Rio 2016, a silver and bronze medal at Tokyo 2021 and three golds here so far. She has two events left (balance beam and floor) and could move into second place on the all-time list.
One of Biles’ gold medals in Rio was the vault. She is also a two-time world champion on the apparatus and has two skills named after her, the Biles and the Biles II, a double backflip in the pike position that requires the highest degree of difficulty (6.4) in the event.
Biles is scheduled to compete on the beam (6:38 a.m. ET) and floor (8:23 p.m. ET) on Monday. At 27, already the oldest U.S. female Olympic gymnast since the 1950s, it may be the last time Biles competes under the Olympic rings.
