Every gymnast survived the Olympic women’s vault finals here Sunday—one landing her “vault of death,” one living to tell about her own extreme effort, one with bronze, one with silver and Simone Biles with yet another gold.
Biles, the teenage gymnast who anchored the historically dominant U.S. team and destroyed the individual all-around competition last week, won her third medal of the Rio Games on what was probably her most competitive apparatus final, setting herself up for a record haul of five gymnastics golds by the time the Olympics are over.
Biles qualified for three individual events here—vault, balance beam on Monday and floor exercise on Tuesday—but vault was the only one that she hadn’t won even once at the sport’s world championships, let alone twice or three times. But this time, she landed her “Amanar” vault and nailed her “Cheng” vault, both high in difficulty and executed exceptionally well.
In the two Summer Games since women’s gymnastics rewrote its Code of Points to reward difficulty and execution—which Biles has exploited unlike any other gymnast—the gaps between the gold and silver medalists were 0.108 points and 0.075 points. Biles beat silver medalist Maria Paseka of Russia by 0.703 points and bronze medalist Giulia Steingruber by 0.75 points.
It was yet another milestone for the U.S. in these Games: No American had won the individual vault in the pre-Biles era of women’s gymnastics. Her personal coach, Aimee Boorman, sensed that was about to change as soon as they walked onto the Rio Olympic Arena’s floor.
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