Simone Biles’ golden run in Rio is picking up steam.
Advertisement
American star gymnast Simone Biles has won her third gold of the Rio Olympics, cleaning up her rivals in the vault.
“The Simone Biles net worth total of $2.1 million has grown 1000% in 2016 from huge endorsement deals built on her gymnastics fame and excellence”, Money Nation explained to readers earlier this week. “I’m the first Simone Biles”, she said Thursday night.
As U.S. Gymnastics tells us, with today’s gold medal, Biles sets a U.S. record for the most gymnastics gold medals in one Olympics for a female athlete.
Despite her reluctance to be identified as such, and given the deep history of segregation in America, Manuel’s win will have a lasting impact.
And Biles, who had qualified for the eight-woman final with the highest qualifying score, was last to go, which gave her the benefit of knowing the mark to beat – Paseka’s 15.253. And worked. And worked some more, doing drills for a new vault, the Cheng, that she’d been playing around with for more than a year but felt wasn’t ready for competition.
Biles soared through the air – an unbeatable lightness of being – and secured the best score of the afternoon with her first vault.
“She can do it better”, Boorman said. What was at stake for the 19-year-old gymnast: Her third gold medal of the games and her first world win on the vault.
“My family means everything to me”. She also looks forward to a time when an African-American female swimmer no longer falls into the realm of impossibility, she said.
“When I would read those comments it was just like, “What?”
One of the iffier events for Biles’ march towards five golds was vault.
Russia’s Maria Paseka edged Switzerland’s Giulia Steingruber for silver, more than 0.7 behind Biles, showcasing the gap between Biles and the rest of the world. Add another handful of medals four years from now in Tokyo and she will be in rarified territory. But since the difficulty value of the vault is so high, she still earned an average score of over 15.066 to place 4th.
Many reigning world champions before Biles have tried to conquer the Olympics, only to crumble under the weight of expectation – thus becoming victims of what in gymnastics circles is known as the “curse of the world champion”.
On bars, reigning world champion Madison Kocian won the silver, and for the men’s pommel horse event, Alex Naddour won the bronze.
Advertisement
There was a little hop following her opening Amanar vault, a 2-1/2 twisting back somersault. She seems heartbroken by the entire deal, as it’s obviously taken a toll on her as the games come to an end.
