Simone Biles Could Make History On Saturday With This Move
American gymnast Simone Biles is gearing up for Saturday’s U.S. Classic competition and on Friday during practice, she nailed one of the hardest moves to do off of a vault, the Yurchenko double pike.
This double pike adds a second flip to the usual one flip vault.
When the video was released of her killing it at practice, fans and other gymnasts couldn’t believe their eyes.
The Olympic champion will be the first female in history to execute this trick if she decides to do it--and lands it--during competition. The Yurchenko has only been attempted and landed by males, so as far as scoring goes, Biles and her team aren’t positive about how many points she can get for it, USA Today explained.
If she decides to go for it at the Olympic trials, the U.S. Classic or at June’s national championship, the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) will have to assign it an official score value before the Tokyo Olympics.
However, due to past instances, like with a double-double beam dismount, where she wasn't scored fairly, allegedly because of fears other gymnasts would try to copy her and get injured in the process, Biles has concerns that the FIG won't score her fairly if she does do it in competition.
“You wanted people to be unique and different and do crazy things. Obviously, safety is a matter and a factor in that, but now they're just like, 'Wait! Wait! Wait! We wanted an open-ended code, but we didn't want to do THAT,' " Biles said. “Or we didn't want Simone to do it, or we didn't want the USA to do it.”
The 24-year-old has been undefeated since Summer 2013.
Viewers can tune into the competition on NBCSN at 7:00 p.m. ET on Saturday and watch the early session via Peacock streaming at 1:30 p.m. ET and an exclusive warm-up session at 5:30 p.m. ET.
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