*Olympic champion Simone Biles made history on Saturday when she became the first woman to land the Yurchenko double pike vault move in competition at the GK US Classic in Indianapolis.
We previously reported that the insanely challenging move was named after Soviet gymnast Natalia Yurchenko, who introduced the concept of a round-off back handspring entry onto the vault before performing a series of twists and flips off of it. The Yurchenko double pike that Biles, 24, nailed starts with the roundoff back handspring to the vault, then doing a double pike (2 straight-legged flips) off the vault.
In February, “60 Minutes” filmed Biles trying and failing to stick the landing several times before eventually landing on her feet. In March, Biles told Texas Monthly about her plans to execute the vault, saying she was making progress during training sessions and her confidence was growing.
“I was really nervous chalking up,” she said in today’s post-training news conference. “I was like, ‘It’s OK, I’ve done this so many times.’ I’ve been doing it for months now. So I felt prepared and I knew I was prepared, it was just the initial landing out there in the arena.”
Biles performed the move on Saturday and added two extra hops for a slightly imperfect landing, per ET Canada. It was her first competition in more than 18 months. She hasn’t been on a competition floor since winning her fifth all-around world championship in October 2019. She’s the hands-down favorite to defend her Olympic title in Tokyo this summer.
“I was just thinking, ‘Do it like training. Don’t try to like overdo anything,'” Biles said afterward, “because I have a tendency as soon as I raise my hand to kind of overpower things, and I did a little bit, but at least I was on my feet. It’s a new vault and I’m proud of how today went.”
Biles wore a leotard decorated with a rhinestone goat, representing her status as the greatest of all time.
WATCH:
Hear from the champ @Simone_Biles ⤵️ #USClassic pic.twitter.com/iZhlFNdLuK
— Team USA (@TeamUSA) May 23, 2021
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