Electric Biles bags 3rd Paris gold medal

PARIS, France (AFP) — Simone Biles soared to her third gold of the Paris Games on Saturday, her gravity-defying Yurchenko double pike propelling her to the women’s vault title for a seventh Olympic crown.

Biles, who led the United States to team gold before grabbing all-around gold, produced a pair of stunning vaults to notch a resounding victory over Olympic and world champion Rebeca Andrade of Brazil.

American Jade Carey took bronze.

Biles took control with her opening vault, the Yurchenko double pike now named the Biles II.

Her height off the vault table was astonishing, and even though her momentum carried her back a step on landing, her execution score of 9.4, along with the 6.4 difficulty score for the move so tough no other woman attempted it, earned 15.700.

Biles produced another soaring effort on her second vault, a Cheng, scoring 14.900 for a winning average of 15.300.

“I’m super excited, ecstatic for how my vaults were,” Biles, 27, said.

“I wanted to perform them well, and I think you saw that today.”

“I put in a lot of work to be able to perform that vault (the Yurchenko double pike) well. I’m excited I got to show that here during finals today.”

Andrade opened with a beautiful Cheng vault that garnered 15.100 points and had a slight hop on landing off her second vault for a 14.833 and an average of 14.966.