Simone Biles reveals: What made the difference on my golden night?
Simone Biles' daring Yurchenko double pike vault Thursday evening (1 August) during the women’s all-around final at the Olympic Games Paris 2024 set her apart from the field.
It always has.
The 27-year-old is the first woman to compete the vault, a round off on to the springboard, back handspring onto the table and then two-and-a-half flips backward in a piked position. It was named for her and given a 6.4 difficulty value at last year’s Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Antwerp.
In the all-around final, she earned a massive 15.766, the highest score of the competition, giving her a cushion that would ultimately lift her to the gold medal.
The vault almost didn’t happen Thursday.
“I wasn’t planning on it,” Biles admitted afterward.
But Biles knew she needed it.
She says she was feeling the pressure of Brazil’s greatest female Olympian ever, Rebeca Andrade, twice the Olympic all-around silver medallist.
“Thank God we did the double pike today,” said Biles after capturing her second Olympic all-around title, the first gymnast in history to take two non-consecutively. “I just knew how phenomenal of an athlete she is.
“On each event, we are very similar in scores, so I was like, ‘Okay, I think I have to bring out the big guns this time,” Biles concluded.
The friendliest of rivalries
The two share a mutual respect with both saying the other has pushed them to new heights.
"Knowing that I gave Simone a bit of work is cool, right?" Andrade said, laughing. "She’s the best in the world, Simone is a phenomenon. We didn’t see it just here, but also in many competitions that she has done. I’m so proud of being able to compete by her side."
It's push them to new levels of competition, too.
“I don’t want to compete with Rebeca no more, I’m tired, she’s way too close,” Biles joked. “I’ve never had an athlete that close, so it definitely put me on my toes and brought out the best athlete in myself.”
Biles has faced smaller margins of victory, including in 2014 when Romania’s Larisa Iordache came within .466 of the World title. But since her Rio 2016 triumph, no one has come within a point-and-a-half until this week.
When Biles nearly missed the low bar on a flip from high on the uneven bars in the second rotation, it was her massive vault that buoyed her, keeping her just .267 behind the Brazilian.
“After the bars and I saw the score come up, I was like, ‘Oh, goodness,’” the American recounted. “But I knew if I did my work, it would all be fine.”
And, of course, it was.