Simone Biles is making her return to Olympic competition on Sunday even more hotly anticipated with the possibility she may perform another new move.
The American, the most decorated gymnast in history with 37 world and Olympic medals, will get the first chance to try to get an uneven bars skill named after her in the women’s qualifying event at Paris 2024.
The 27-year-old already has five other eponymous skills but this would be the first one on bars and would make her the only active female gymnast to have one on all four apparatus.
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She submitted the original skill to the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) technical committee last week and so if she performs it cleanly here in Paris, it will bear her name.
Biles is back on the Olympic stage three years after pulling out of several events at the last Games in Tokyo with the ‘twisties’ – a disorientating mental block.
She already announced her arrival as a huge favourite to add to her seven Olympic medals when she nailed her Biles II vault in podium training on Thursday – the most recent of the skills named after her.
She and her American team have been keen to keep the pressure off her at these Games, with her coach fulfilling media commitments on her behalf and the gymnast herself being reassured that she does not need to compete in all events.
Bars would be the most likely one she would opt out of – with it being her ‘weakest’, if you can call an apparatus on which she has a world silver medal. Perhaps you can if ‘just’ one out of 30 world medals has come on bars.
However, with this new skill in the mix, that now seems unlikely.
She is scheduled to begin her qualification round at 10:40 BST on Sunday, the session after Great Britain’s women begin their Olympic campaign (08:30 BST)
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FIG describes the uneven bars skill as “a clear hip circle forward with one-and-a-half turns to handstand”.
In other words, when she starts in a handstand on the upper bar, the American would dip her body to travel around the bar and then rise back into a handstand before doing one and a half pirouettes (540 degrees) and then stop to hold a handstand position.
The governing body says if she attempts the skill it is likely to be at the beginning of her routine where she performs a Weiler. The new skill is a variation of the one first done by Canadian gymnast Wilhem Weiler.
“In order for the move to be named for her, Biles will have to perform it without a major fault at some phase of the competition in Paris,” said FIG, which has given it a difficulty value of 0.5 points., external
What skills does Biles have named after her?
Biles already has five elements named after her – two vaults, two floor tumbling skills and a beam dismount.
Only Soviet five-time Olympic champion Nellie Kim has more, with seven.
Biles’ most recent eponymous skill – the Biles II vault – was on show in podium training at the Bercy Arena in Paris on Thursday, where she landed it perfectly.
She only added this skill – a Yurchenko double pike – last year and so if she performs it at these Games that would also be an Olympic first.
The five skills she has named after her are:
Biles on floor: double layout with half-twist ie a double somersault in stretched position with a half twist (named after her in 2013)
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Biles II on floor: triple-twisting double somersault (named after her in 2019)
Biles on vault: round-off on to springboard, back handspring with half-turn on to vault, followed by double-twisting somersault in stretched position (named after her in 2018)
Biles II on vault: Round-off on to board, back handspring on to vault, then double somersault in piked position (named after her in 2023)
Biles on beam: double-double dismount ie a double-twisting, double
