US gymnastics great Simone Biles will likely have to bring out the “big guns” again on Saturday as she vies for her third gold medal of the Paris Olympics in a women’s vault final that again pits her against defending champion Rebeca Andrade of Brazil.
Biles shook off a sub-par uneven bars routine to edge Andrade for all-around gold on Thursday, two days after she and her USA teammates captured gold.
One difference-maker for Biles was her signature Yurchenko double pike vault, which has a difficulty score so high that even with an imperfect landing she out-scored Andrade.
“I wasn’t planning on it,” Biles said of opting for the double pike in all-around.
“But I just knew how phenomenal of an athlete (Andrade) is. So I was like, ‘OK, I think I have to bing out the big guns this time.”
To retain the vault title she won in Tokyo, where Biles withdrew from multiple events because of the mental block gymnasts call the “twisties,” Andrade might have to up her own firepower.
The Brazilian edged Biles for the vault world title last October and has indicated she could unveil a never-before-seen triple-twisting Yurchenko vault. If she pulls that off it would carry a difficulty score of 6.0 — closer to the 6.4 of the double pike version now known as the Biles II.
After her close call in the all-around, where Biles trailed for the first time since the halfway point in Rio, Biles quipped that Andrade was making her life too stressful.
“I don’t want to compete with Rebeca no more. I’m tired!” Biles said. “It’s way too close.”
But she added: “I knew if I did my work, it would all be fine.”
Should Biles or Andrade falter, the gymnasts ready to pounce include American Jade Carey, who won vault silver, team silver and floor exercise gold in Tokyo, and South Korea Yeo Seo-jeong, who deployed her own signature skill, the “Yeo”, to grab bronze in Tokyo.
Yeo’s signature vault is a family affair, combining two skills named after her father Yeo Hong-chul, silver medallist in Atlanta in 1996.
– Whitlock chases treble –
In Saturday’s men’s pommel horse final, Max Whitlock will seek a third straight Olympic gold and an unprecedented fourth medal on the same apparatus.
The 31-year-old Briton goes in as the No. 3 qualifier behind Ireland’s Rhys McClenaghan — winner of back-to-back world titles in 2022 and 2023 — and Stephen Nedoroscik, the bespectacled pommel horse specialist who became an internet sensation when he clinched the USA’s team bronze medal with a sweet-swinging routine.
Takaaki Sugino scored fourth-best in qualifying to give himself a chance to keep Japan’s gold medal run going after their team triumph and Shinnosuke Oka’s all-around victory.
The men’s floor exercise final will see Israel’s Artem Dolgopyat defend the gold he won in Tokyo after he secured his place with the seventh-best qualifying score.
Britain’s Jake Jarman topped the qualifying table ahead of Carlos Yulo of the Philippines, a former world champion who says he’s “shooting for the stars” in Paris after missing out on the podium in Tokyo.
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