This vault incorporates a round-off onto the springboard and a again handspring onto the vault. Biles then performs two flips in a pike place, which means her legs are straight and she or he folds her physique at her hips.
This ability is also referred to as a Yurchenko double pike. The time period “Yurchenko” refers back to the entry onto the vault and is named for Natalia Yurchenko, a world champion for the Soviet Union; it’s the commonest kind of vault on the elite stage. Biles turned the primary girl to carry out a Yurchenko-style vault with two flips within the air.
All different feminine elite gymnasts have carried out Yurchenko vaults with only one flip. They decide so as to add twists to extend issue. (Some gymnasts, together with Biles, have mastered 2½-twisting Yurchenkos, however the triple-twisting Yurchenko has but to be efficiently carried out in ladies’s gymnastics.) The second flip within the Yurchenko double pike makes it terribly tough.
“The double pike, it’s by no means been regular, and it by no means shall be,” mentioned Joscelyn Roberson, an alternate for the U.S. Olympic staff who trains alongside Biles.
Biles shocked the gymnastics neighborhood when she posted a video of herself practising this ability in February 2020; earlier than then, a double-flipping Yurchenko was not perceived to be a sensible component in ladies’s gymnastics. Biles has mentioned she initially practiced this ability as a option to work on her push off the desk to enhance her different Yurchenko-style vault.
Ultimately, Biles realized she may safely carry out the Yurchenko double pike in a contest, and she or he unveiled the vault on the U.S. Traditional in Might 2021. She didn’t carry out the ability once more that season, together with on the Olympics, the place she withdrew from a number of occasions, together with the vault remaining. However Biles did the Yurchenko double pike at about half of her competitions in 2023, and on the world championships, the ability formally turned generally known as the Biles II.
“Individuals, I hope, notice that perhaps that’s one of many final occasions you’re going to see a vault like that in your life from a ladies’s gymnast,” Coach Laurent Landi mentioned after Biles carried out this vault on the world championships final 12 months. “I believe it’s time to understand that.”
Biles has carried out the Yurchenko double pike at each competitors in 2024, and it may propel her to a gold medal in Paris. This vault has a problem worth of 6.4, which is larger than each different vault in ladies’s gymnastics.
