VIDEO: Team USA’s Simone Biles Continues Her Dominance In Rio By Taking Gold In Women’s Vault
By KAREN ROSEN, TEAM USA // August 15, 2016
competes on balance beam on Monday
ABOVE VIDEO: Simone Biles crushes the field in the vault competition for her third gold medal of the Rio Games.
RIO DE JANEIRO (TEAM USA) – Simone Biles discovered there’s actually a drawback to having more than one Olympic gold medal.
After Biles won team and all-around gold medals at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, she and teammate Aly Raisman, who has a gold and a silver, wore their medals for a television show.
“They started to scratch,” said Biles, sounding slightly alarmed. “So we’re not going to do that anymore.”
And now she has three. And Biles is still in the hunt for two more of the medals which she said are surprisingly heavy. That would make her the first female gymnast in Olympic history to win five gold medals at one Olympic Games.
ABOVE VIDEO: Simone Biles gets her third gold medal of the Rio Games at the vault medal ceremony.
She surpassed Shannon Miller as the most decorated gymnast in U.S. history with 17 medals in Olympic and world competition. Miller has 16.
She will compete on balance beam on Monday and floor exercise on Tuesday. Biles led the qualification in all three individual events, failing to qualify only in the uneven bars, in which her teammate, Madison Kocian, won the silver medal Sunday. Alex Naddour was the surprise bronze medalist on pommel horse.
Biles remained golden in Rio by nailing both of her vaults by incredible margins over all of her competitors.
Not only is she the first U.S. gymnast to win the gold medal in women’s vault, she’s also the first U.S. gymnast to win three golds at an Olympic Games.
Biles scored 15.966 points – the average of her two vaults – and was the only gymnast to surpass 16 points on any vault.
Maria Paseka, the 2015 world champion, was second with 15.253 points followed by Giulia Steingruber of Switzerland with 15.216.
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Hard to believe given Biles’ dominance in the sport the previous three years, but she had never won a world gold medal in vault. Biles won the world championship bronze medal in 2015 and took silver in 2013 and 2014.
“There is a lot of satisfaction that I have winning gold on vault finally,” Biles said.
In some quarters, Biles has been called the greatest female gymnast ever.
