Olympic gymnast, Simone Biles, at the 2021 US Classic, landed the Yurchenko Double Pike on the vault exercise. The first woman to ever perform the “impossible” move in competition just did a pretty good job of nailing the exact same move on the training podium at the Tokyo Olympics.
Olympic gymnast, Simone Biles, at the 2021 US Classic, landed the Yurchenko Double Pike on the vault exercise. The first woman to ever perform the “impossible” move in competition just did a pretty good job of nailing the exact same move on the training podium at the Tokyo Olympics.
There was some doubt about whether she would pull the move out for competition in Tokyo, or maybe it was just coyness, but Biles certainly looks ready to do the business and go for gold in the finals.
That’s all kinds of extraordinary and amazing and superlative. Let’s be clear, the Yurchenko Double Pike is a back handspring onto the vault, a flip in the air, two twists at the same time, and a second flip landing in the pike position.
The move is name after former Soviet gymnast, Natalia Yurchenko, and incorporartes speed, elevation off the platform, rotations, and power. Few men perform the move and rarely with the same degree of difficulty and power output that Biles has exhibited.
It is a dangerous move because, if not done right, you can break your neck. Biles, technically, is doing her own variatiion with an even greater degree of difficulty because she is doing two and half filps. If she nails the move at the Olympics, it could end up being a new move named after her.
Biles already has four skill moves to her name, this would be the fifth, which yet another layer of superlative on top of everything else she has achieved.