Simone Biles Gets Another Olympic Gold With Her Historic Vault

PARIS — Once the name "Simone Biles" rings out in the arena, the phones are everywhere. People don't just film her during official competition. Fans in the stands film her warming up. They film her stepping onto the competition floor. They film her just walking around. Beyond the professional photographers and videographers, there is an unofficial Simone Biles press corps. She delivered for them all.

On Saturday, Biles landed her Yurchenko double pike vault, a skill so difficult and dangerous no other woman has tried it in competition, and won the gold medal in vault. Biles delivered her best attempt of these Olympics, soaring off the vault table for two flips in a pike position before landing, with just a hop backward, on her feet.

The crowd lost its damn mind. However loud it sounded on TV, it did not reflect that arena. They cheered. They screamed. They applauded. Around my area in the high seats, I had spotted flags from Germany, Korea, Great Britain, Canada and the Philippines. But nearly everyone cheered for Biles.

There were fans of Brazil's Rebeca Andrade in the crowd, too. It was impossible to ignore how loud the crowd got for Andrade, Biles's friend and closest rival. But Biles and Andrade are competing at such a high level that they turn everyone into fans.

Biles went before Andrade in yesterday's competition. The minute she approached the vault, people were ready. The empty space alongside one side of my section of stands filled with people standing up, leaning on the rail just bit and filming on their phones, all angling for the best view. The entire vault took a few seconds, then the arena exploded into a party that only stopped because Biles had to vault a second time. Because Biles went toward the middle of the competition, before Andrade and fellow American Jade Carey, it created a major (by standards of gymnastics) points gap between her and the gymnast who was in second place at the time. Between her two vaults, Biles scored a whopping 15.300.

Andrade was the penultimate competitor, and delivered two beautiful vaults to hearty applause, but neither was the triple-twisting Yurchenko which she had teased. (She, too, has an unofficial press corps at these Olympics. No one else can understand what it's like to be Simone Biles, but Rebeca Andrade comes close.) Andrade scored 14.966—excellent, but not enough to pass Biles. Carey competed last and scored 14.466. Her bronze completed her own redemption tour, after tripping on the vault runway in Tokyo, where she had been expected to medal. "This medal means everything to me," Carey told reporters afterward.

Will that be the final time Biles competes in Olympic vault? When asked at the subsequent press conference, she said it "definitely" would be her last Yurchenko double pike, because "I kind of nailed that one." But she did leave the door slightly open.

"The next Olympics is at home [in Los Angeles], so you just never know," Biles said. "But I am getting really old."