Every gymnast survived the Olympic women’s vault finals here on Sunday-one landing her “vault of death”, one living to tell about her own extreme effort, one with bronze, one with silver and Simone Biles with yet another gold.
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After becoming the first Black woman to take home the gold in an individual swim event, Simone chose to give fans world wide a bit of shock and awe as she also became the first American woman to place in the top two in two different individual swim events and we love it!
Biles added a third gold medal to her rapidly rising haul on Sunday, easily capturing the women’s vault final.
The 19-year-old averaged 15.966 during her two vaults Sunday, well clear of silver medalist Maria Paseka of Russian Federation and bronze medalist Giulia Steingruber of Switzerland.
The vault event was totally Simone Biles’ to lose, as the 19-year-old went into the competition with a almost ideal score in the qualifiers of 16.050. LaShawn Merritt will attempt to win his second gold in the 400, eight years after he won his first.
Here’s the five biggest things to watch from the Rio Olympics on Sunday.
Simone Biles now has three Olympic golds with two events left. Karmakar landed the Produnova, first on her feet, then on her butt, then back to her feet. Paseka was the only other gymnast to top 15 on each of her vaults.
She was even better this time.
Russia’s Aliya Mustafina finally ended the American women’s stranglehold as she captured the asymmetric bars gold for a second successive Olympics with a routine full of grace and power. Chusovitina said afterward she’s already planning to train all the way to the 2020 games in Tokyo.
She describes Mariano, 22, as her “boyfriend” and he calls her ‘Queen Biles…my love’. On Sunday, she was asked numerous non-gymnastics questions, including whether she would like to perform on an upcoming season of “Dancing With the Stars”. Instead, she aced her Cheng for 16.033 points. But since the difficulty value of the vault is so high, she still earned an average score of over 15.066 to place 4th.
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“It really makes me think about all the generations of Olympic teams and athletes I watched and the inspiration that I have had”, Vollmer said. It was the highest score of anyone in the entire field.
