Since May 2021, when Simone Biles presented his latest innovation in the vault, a Yurchenko with a double backflip, many specialists had analyzed the technical aspects of the exercise, but only a few measured every detail with scrupulous accuracy. One of them was John Eric Goffdoctor in Physics at the University of Lynchburg, who after examining the videos of the great American diva offered his data to the newspaper Houston Chronicle. According to Goff, for Biles to nail that jump she must accelerate up to 25 km/h during the race, push off the colt with her hands for just 16 hundredths of a second, spin at 150 revolutions per minute (a little less than half that of the blades of a helicopter) and rise, at the maximum point and upside down, three meters above the ground. “He could dunk on a regulation basket if he had a ball at his feet,” Goff concluded. Now, after her second gold at the Antwerp World Championships, won on Friday during the individual final of the all-around competition, experts wonder to what extent and when Biles will be able to continue revolutionizing gymnastics.
“You can probably modify your exercises, try other combinations and difficulties,” he says. Diana Plaza, technical secretary of the women’s and men’s teams of the Spanish Federation (RFEG). «You can see that he is having a lot of fun. Her 26 years are an adult for a gymnast, but they also give her a maturity that will allow her to continue enjoying herself, if she considers it so. It is not ruled out that she could dare with another element whose difficulty would make it almost unapproachable for his rivals,” Plaza adds to EL MUNDO.
«He has more than earned the right to choose his future. Let’s hope she doesn’t get injured and we can see her at the Paris Games, where we will all hope she can get rid of the thorn in Tokyo. Afterwards, I believe that she will make the decision to withdraw,” he predicts. Gervasio Deferr, two-time Olympic champion in Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004 in vaulting. However, the Barcelonan never presented the Yurchenko with a double backflip in official competition, already registered by the International Federation under the name Biles II, due to the risks it entailed when it came to scoring. “I only trained him by falling into the foam pool,” he recalls. What does Biles have, then, to dare to take a jump that until now was forbidden to men?
«His speed and power are brutal. “She is also brave like herself,” Deferr continues, before detailing each aspect of the jump. «To enter the double pike, the previous phases have to be technically perfect: the shoulder angle must be exact to gain the necessary height during the flight and the passage of the hands from the rack to the legs must be very fast» , recounts those thousandths of a second only within his reach. The risks, logically, multiply during landing. «If you go too tight you can break both ankles at the same time. I think that the jump is even more worth it because of all the dangers it entails and because of how easy it is to fail,” Deferr adds, in conversation with this newspaper.
Plaza, likewise, completes the analysis with another key: «Of course Simone has power and speed, but what makes her different from the rest is her technique in terms of the biomechanics of the element. “It is a unique and differential talent.” Yesterday, during the final of the complete competition, Biles limited herself to a Yurchenko with a pirouette and a half in a plank, with a difficulty of 5.6, compared to 6.4 for the pirouette double somersault. His final total (58,399) was enough to surpass Rebecca Andrade (56.766) y Shilese Jones (56,766), win gold and now have 27 medals in World Cups. Today, during the first day of the apparatus final, with the rack and the asymmetrical parallels, presumably he will resort to his most difficult yet to further adorn a sublime record.