Simone Biles is looking to add yet another Olympic gold medal to her growing collection at the Paris Games. This time, she will compete in the vault final, where — once again — she is the favorite to win. If she does win, it will be her seventh Olympic gold medal and 10th over all.
Three years ago, during the team final at the Tokyo Games, Biles got lost in the air while performing a vault because of a mental block and subsequently withdrew from most of her other events. But based on how she’s fared here on vault, that block — which gymnasts call “the twisties” — is well behind her. Although she has admitted to feeling nervous and hoping she wouldn’t have a flashback to Tokyo when she first did the vault here, she finished first in qualifying in the event and also nailed her vault during the team final.
Biles has already won two golds in Paris, one in the team event and another in the all-around, where she beat Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade after trailing halfway through. Andrade won the vault gold medal at the Tokyo Games after Biles pulled out of several events with a mental block.
The competition between Biles and Andrade would be a close race Saturday if Biles chooses to forego her Yurchenko double pike vault, which has a huge base score for difficulty because it is so dangerous. The vault is a round-off onto the springboard, a back handspring onto the vaulting table and then two full flips in the air in a folded position. What makes it so scary is that there is little room for error: One small mistake, and she can land on her head.
To keep Andrade at bay, Biles is likely to perform the vault again today, and it may be the last time she does the vault in public. At 27, she has hinted that this will be her last Olympics. After the vault final, she has only two events left: the balance beam and the floor exercise. Both are on Monday.
In Saturday’s final, each gymnast will perform two vaults, and Biles’s second one will likely be the Cheng, the hardest vault done by other top female gymnasts who hope to win a medal. It’s a round-off onto the springboard and a half turn onto the vaulting table, then one-and-a-half twists in the air in the laid-out position.
Here’s what else to know:
The vault final begins at 4:20 p.m. Paris time and will be streamed live on Peacock and NBCOlympics.com at 10:20 a.m. Eastern, and then will be part of NBC’s prime time Olympics broadcast that begins at 8 p.m. Eastern.
Jade Carey of the United States qualified third in the vault and will be vying for her third Olympic gold medal. She won the team gold medal with the U.S. squad this week and also won gold on the floor exercise in Tokyo. She did not make the floor exercise final this time after an uncharacteristic performance in the event in qualifying. Among other smaller mistakes, she fell backward and out of bounds on one tumbling pass and failed to make the final. Later, she said she hadn’t been feeling well for several days and couldn’t eat.
Andrade, who gave Biles a scare in the all-around because she had been performing so well, said that Thursday’s all-around event was her last. She has struggled with injuries, including three knee surgeries in six years.
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