During podium training on Friday ahead of Saturday's U.S. Classic, Simone Biles casually showed off her latest vault and WE PROMISE YOU ARE NOT READY FOR THIS. In case you haven't guessed yet, here's Biles showing off her Yurchenko double pike -- a vault no woman has ever competed. Take a second to get mentally prepared, because your mind is about to be completely blown:
Simone Biles just landed her Yurchenko double pike in podium training and we are SPEECHLESS. 😮 #USClassic@Simone_Biles @OnHerTurf pic.twitter.com/S9YsasXoXu
— #TokyoOlympics (@NBCOlympics) May 21, 2021
The height! The near stick! The swagger! Biles has been teasing this new skill for a while now, but to see it look THIS good and in training at an actual event ... it's almost unbelievable.
Thankfully, for the mortals among us, she did admit to giving herself a pep talk before attempting the most difficult vault any woman has ever done: "I was really nervous chalking up," she said in the post-training news conference, "I was like, 'It's OK, I've done this so many times.' I've been doing it for months now. So I felt prepared and I knew I was prepared, it was just the initial landing out there in the arena."
Biles also gave some insight into how the vault came about. Even she didn't believe she'd really compete it when she first started playing around with it. "We were just flipping to flip, to see what I could do ... but never in a million years did I think that it would be feasible and to actually put it out on a competition floor," Biles said.
On Saturday, Biles will compete for the first time in more than 18 months -- she hasn't been on a competition floor since winning her fifth all-around world championship in October 2019. She's the hands-down favorite to defend her Olympic title in Tokyo this summer, and it's looking more and more likely that she will add another "Biles" skill to her repertoire. (For those keeping count, she already has four.)
And, since of course you want to see it again, here it is from another perspective:
Simone Biles just did THAT. 🤯
— #TokyoOlympics (@NBCOlympics) May 21, 2021
(via @NastiaLiukin) @OnHerTurf pic.twitter.com/HtkwAvPcEH
