Olympic gymnastics kicks off this weekend in Paris and Simone Biles is looking better than ever.
In Thursday’s podium training, which is akin to a “dress rehearsal” for Olympic competition, Simone Biles stuck her eponymous Yurchenko double pike vault cold. The skill, which bears her name because she was the first woman to perform it, is notoriously hard to land cleanly.
Because underdoing the vault can be so dangerous, Biles often overrotates the skill, resulting in a fall or several backward steps. The difficulty rating of the skill is so high (6.4) that she is capable of receiving a huge score — and even contending for a vault medal — with a fall.
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When Biles sticks it, it’s pure magic.
Biles’ showing in podium training was a master class overall. During qualification, the U.S. women are slated to start on the balance beam. It’s never an easy place to start, but they rehearsed the competition in order to simulate the real thing as closely as possible.
On the beam, Biles showed no sign of nerves. Reigning Olympic all-around champion Suni Lee had a tougher outing, falling on her risky layout, step-out mount. She did her routine again, opting for a safer straddle mount, and had a clean showing on her second try.
Another eponymous “Biles” skill, the triple-twisting double back flip, came at the top of the next event, the floor exercise. Biles is the reigning world champion on this event, and it shows. She performed the hardest tumbling being done in the world with ease and indomitable power. A few out-of-bounds landings here and there, but nothing to worry about.
Tokyo team silver medalist Jordan Chiles showed an incredible amount of progress from the Olympic trials to now. She performed all four events with the consistency she became renowned for in the lead-up to the Tokyo Olympics, when she hit every domestic routine the entire year.
Chiles will be the first to say she didn’t have the Olympic performance she wanted, falling a handful of times in qualification and again in team finals. This time, she appears capable of challenging Lee for the second U.S. spot in the all-around final and could very well make the floor final as well.
She’d have to get through her teammate, reigning Olympic floor champion Jade Carey, first. Carey has yet to perform her full difficulty in Paris, opting for a simplified vault and floor routine.
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After tripping on the vault runway in the Tokyo event finals, Carey is on the hunt for some redemption, too.
“A lot of us will say we want redemption and we all had something that didn’t go our way,” Carey said at the trials in Minneapolis.
Another highlight of podium training was Lee’s bar routine, which is chock-full of high-flying release moves and daring acrobatic connections. She is known to adjust her routine on the fly, depending on how she is feeling. In training, she connected a Nabieva, Bhardwaj and Maloney half, which would certainly put her on track to secure a spot in the bars final.
That event final is slated to be one of the most competitive of these Olympics, with reigning Olympic gold medalist Nina Derwael back in the mix after recovering from a shoulder injury, plus rising Algerian bars star Kaylia Nemour and the Chinese team, who are as exquisite on bars as ever.
Newcomer Hezly Rivera, who at 16 is the youngest member of the Team USA delegation, looked calm and composed in training. Despite her relative inexperience, Rivera has a team full of seasoned Olympians to lean on throughout these Paris Games.
According to the lineups they rehearsed, Rivera appears to be performing on bars and beam in qualifications. Team final lineups, assuming the U.S. women sail through as expected, will likely be determined by Sunday’s performances.
Women’s gymnastics kicks off with the qualification round on Sunday.
