Simone Biles won the gold medal in the women’s artistic gymnastics final with two powerful and stunning vaults that showcased her skills in her strongest event.
Biles beat silver medalist Rebecca Andrade of Brazil by more than three-tenths of a point due to the higher level of difficulty and the execution of her vaults.
Biles is only the second woman to win gold on the vault twice, after also winning in 2016 in Rio.
Biles went third in the rotation, scoring an average of 15.3 on her two vaults, one of which was the Yurchenko double pike known as the Biles II, with a difficulty of 15.700. She finished up with a Cheng vault, which involves a half-twist onto the apparatus and a 1.5 twist.
Biles is the third woman to become a a two-time all-around champion. The other two were Larisa Latynina of the Soviet Union in 1956 and 1960 and Vera Caslavska of Czechoslovakia in 1964 and 1968.
At age 27, she is the oldest female gymnast to win the all-around gold since 1952, when 30-year-old Maria Gorokhovskaya of the Soviet Union won the first-ever Olympic all-around in Helsinki.
Andrade completed a Cheng vault first and stuck the landing, and her second vault was a Yurchenko two-and-a-half, another highly difficult vault. Her difficulty was not as high as Biles’s, but she scored 14.966, about three-tenths higher than her qualifying score on the apparatus.
Team USA’s Jade Carey was not expected to beat Biles or Andrade after qualifying third for the event. Like Rebecca Andrade, Carey completed a Cheng vault for her first vault and attempted a Yurchenko two-and-a-half twist for the second, but dropped the half twist after failing to get the height she needed.
Her landings were nearly perfect on both vaults, giving her a score of 14.466.
The United States also had a third gymnast technically qualify for the vault final. Jordan Chiles placed fourth in qualifying, but only two gymnasts from each country are allowed to compete in the final.
Biles has now won 10 Olympic medals in her career, seven of which are gold medals. She has the most medals of any female gymnast, with her all-around title on Thursday breaking Shannon Miller’s record of eight medals. Biles also won a team gold on Tuesday with her teammates, Suni Lee, Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey, and Hezly Rivera.
In this Olympics, Biles has two more chances to medal. She will also compete in the floor exercise, where she qualified first, and balance beam finals, where she qualified second after China’s Zhou Yaqin.
The United States is currently first in the overall medal count with 50 total medals in the Paris games, with 11 gold medals, 20 silver, and 19 bronze.
