Simone Biles performed a new difficult jump, now named after her

The return to international competitions of the outstanding American gymnast Simone Biles, who suffered a mental breakdown at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and did not compete for a long time after that, turned out to be extremely impressive. Biles convincingly won the qualifying competition at the World Championships in Antwerp, during which she performed a new vault of amazing difficulty, now named after her.

Simone Biles’ performance at the start of the Belgian Artistic Gymnastics World Championships was, of course, doomed to turn into a media bomb. There are rarely such spectacular comebacks in sports.

Biles, who reigned in artistic gymnastics for many seasons, winning four Olympic golds and two and a half dozen different world championship awards, seemed quite likely to say goodbye to the sport after the Tokyo Olympics, held in the summer of 2021. There, instead of another grandiose triumph, she experienced a grandiose failure, not achieving a single victory and withdrawing from the team tournament and individual all-around due to what she herself and the doctors called an acute “mental breakdown.” After this, the American took a break of about two years, and for the first time after that she appeared in competitions only in August, immediately winning the US Championship. After him, of course, suspicions arose that at 26 years old, a serious age by gymnastics standards, Biles was able to restore her previous form by the time of the Antwerp championship. But everything turned out to be even more interesting.

In the qualifying competitions, Simone Biles literally destroyed young and young competitors who were accustomed to fighting for medals without her. She performed amazingly on all apparatuses. She took first place in floor exercises and beam. On the uneven bars, a genre that she has always disliked, she was second behind her compatriot Shailise Jones. Actually, this stability of hers already looked, given the context, incredible. But for dessert, Simone Biles has something even sweeter and cooler in store for the public.

She gave her surprise when it was time to perform the vault. Everyone learned that Simone Biles has a new trick in her arsenal during the American Championship. We are talking about an already extremely difficult jump, named after the outstanding Soviet gymnast Natalya Yurchenko (it involves jumping onto a bridge for take-off with a preliminary round-off), but with “additives” that make the whole combination with two backflips absolutely mind-blowing in difficulty. At the national championship, Biles performed it with errors. In Antwerp, it turned out almost perfect for her – amplitude, powerful, with a precise and clear landing, which allowed the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG), with a clear conscience, as the regulations provide, to assign the name of the first performer to the jump. Moreover, it has already become Biles’ second name: her previous one was added to the list of achievements back in 2018. Two elements in gymnastics are also named after her – in floor exercises and on the balance beam.

For her support, Simone Biles earned simply cosmic points – 15,266. But there is a nuance. In fact, it can easily boost your score significantly. The fact is that in Antwerp the judges were forced to immediately cut off half a point not because of the athlete’s mistakes, but because her coach Laurent Lundy came out to the mats during the jump to insure her, still fearing for the outcome of the trick. This type of insurance is not encouraged by FIG. But judging by the American woman’s confidence, she will soon be able to do without it.

Alexey Dospehov