By: Elizabeth Kwan

American artistic gymnast Simone Biles won an Olympic all-around gold medal during an intense performance of the Yurchenko double pike in Paris last week on August 1, 2024.

Known for her complex performances, Simone Biles is often dubbed as the GOAT (Greatest of All Time) in gymnastics. She has been an active competitor in the Olympic Games since the age of nineteen, playing in the world floor and vault exercises. During her Olympic debut in 2016, Biles became the first US woman to win four gold medals in one game and is the first ever gymnast to win six world all-around titles. Biles currently has eleven Olympic medals, the most that any US gymnast has.

The Yurchenko double pike is famous for being the world’s most difficult vault (difficulty value of 6.4). The performance involves a round-off on the springboard, a back handspring, and flips in a pike position. If a competitor messed up while in the air of this vault, they would likely land on their head or neck. Simone Biles is the first woman to attempt it in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. Due to her shocking performance, Biles’s points quickly rose higher than her Brazilian competitor Rebeca Andrade’s.

Although Biles made several mistakes in her performance of the Yurchenko double pike, they were mostly minimal and managed to outstand the other gymnasts, excluding an incorrect positioning on the uneven bars. Consequently, the GOAT of gymnastics had to bend her knees and swing an additional circle around the bars.

The error briefly brought Biles into third place, but she surpassed in all other aspects and won Olympic gold. On X (previously known as Twitter), Simone Biles tweeted, “I love my black job,” with a couple of attached photos of her posing with her new all-around gold medal.

Biles will be returning to Texas with her sixth career gold medal. Her final score was 59.131. Nearing the end of the competition, Simone Biles had a thrilled expression spread across her face, already predicting her results.