Spoiler alerts below. The women’s gymnastics vault final will re-air in primetime on NBC 5 at 7 p.m. CT.
Simone Biles has done it again. The golden GOAT secured yet another spot at the top of the Olympic podium, this time for the vault.
She was followed by what has arguably been her biggest competitor, Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade.
In a repeat of the women’s all-around final, which saw the U.S. win gold and bronze and Andrade win silver, Biles’ U.S. teammate Jade Carey came in third, just behind Andrade.
Vault is one of Biles’ best events. She has two skills named after her on the apparatus and has put up some of the highest scores at international competitions.
It’s the same event where Biles faced a mental block known as the twisties in the Tokyo Games — a moment she has clearly put behind her as she won her second Olympic vault title.
She scored an average of 15.300 for her two vaults, a rotation that included her signature Yurchenko double pike, which is the hardest being done in competition by any female gymnast.
Biles is now the second woman to win vault twice, joining Vera Casalavska of Czechoslovakia as a two-time gold medalist on the vault. Casalavska went back to back in 1964 and 1968. Biles now has 10 Olympic medals in her career, tied for the third most by a female gymnast. She also boosted her medal count at major international competitions to 40, the most by any gymnast.
The crowd inside a packed Bercy Arena roared when Biles was introduced. Wearing a sequined red leotard, she delivered another show-stopping performance in what could be the last vault competition of her life.
She drilled her Yurchenko double pike, exploding off the block and then flipping backward twice with her hands clasped behind her knees. She landed with a big bounce — a nod to the energy she generates — with her right foot on the out-of-bounds line.
The judges dinged her a tenth of a point for that. It hardly mattered. Her score of 15.700 meant she merely needed to avoid disaster on her second vault to win. Instead, she almost stuck her Cheng, which requires a roundoff onto the springboard, then a half twist onto the block followed by 1 1/2 twists while doing a forward somersault.
The ensuing 14.900 meant the rest of the eight-woman field was going for second.
Andrade, the vault champion in Tokyo, put together two excellent vaults to claim silver and her third medal of the Games after a silver in the all-around and a bronze in the team final. Andrade’s average of 14.966 was well clear of everyone else.
Carey, who slipped during the women’s vault final in Tokyo and finished eighth, earned her third Olympic medal to go with the floor exercise gold she won in Tokyo and the team gold she captured with Biles on Tuesday.
Biles will have two more chances to boost her medal haul in Paris. She will compete in the balance beam and floor exercise finals on Monday.
Check back for more on this developing story.