(Antwerp) Back on the global stage after two years of absence, gymnastics superstar Simone Biles impressed upon entering the competition at the World Championships in Antwerp by successfully completing an extremely difficult jump during qualifications.
This jump, a Yurchenko double pike, is now named after the 26-year-old American, with Biles being the first woman to achieve it in an international competition.
He was rewarded with a score of 15,266 points, far ahead of the competition. And even ! His coach having positioned himself on the side of the mat for safety, he was deducted 0.5 penalty points.
In total, she accumulated 58,865 points at the end of the four apparatuses and took the lead in qualifying after the first three subdivisions (out of ten). With teammates Shilese Jones, Leanne Wong, Skye Blakely and Joscelyn Roberson, the Americans total 171,395 and will be hard to dislodge from first place.
Simone Biles makes her return to the international level in Antwerp, two years after the grueling Tokyo Olympics. Arriving in Japan as the big favorite after her four titles won five years earlier in Rio, Biles had collapsed, withdrawing from most of the events because of “twisties”, sudden losses of any reference in space.
On Sunday, she gave the impression of never having stopped. However, the four-time Olympic champion completely cut herself off from the gym for more than a year to take care of her mental health and only returned to competition last August.
The American, luminous in her sequined turquoise leotard, began her qualifications with a masterful exercise on the uneven bars (14,400 pts), before continuing with impeccable variations on the balance beam (14,566) and floor (14,633). ).
But it was on vault that she most dazzled the public in the diamond capital.
” She did it ! That’s all I can say,” smiled his coach, Frenchman Laurent Landi. “She manages her nerves, she manages the pressure… It was the last apparatus [the vault], with fatigue… It’s great, it’s great. »
A jump which starts with a round impulse and continues with a double back somersault, the body folded in half and the legs straight, which she has in fact mastered since 2021 and which she had planned to perform at the Tokyo Games.
We finally had to wait two years and these Belgian World Championships to include it in the gymnastics scoring code, 21 years after the Chinese Yang Wei did the same among the men. A sign of its difficulty, since the Chinese, only a handful of male gymnasts have dared to do it in competition.
With this jump, which requires power, speed, technique and a sense of timing, Biles baptizes a fifth technical element in his name in the gym code.
The American, who is competing in her first World Championships since 2019 in Antwerp, did not speak at the end of qualifying, running through the mixed zone at full speed and with a big smile.
She will return to the Sportpaleis in the Flemish port city on Wednesday for the women’s team final.