Vault, Women

Simone Biles had a new move on the vault that, if executed perfectly, would have become the fifth move named after her. The vault was the only piece of apparatus in which Biles came first in qualifying. Because of her mental health issues in Tokyo, however, Biles pulled out of the competition and her place was taken by fellow American MyKala Skinner. The oldest female gymnast in Olympic history, 46-year-old Oksana Chusovitina, was competing in her eighth Games in Tokyo, and it was to be her final Olympics. After finishing 14th in the qualifying competition for the vault, she emotionally announced her retirement to a standing ovation from her fellow competitors.

The first vault in the final was from MyKala Skinner, and she set an impressive mark of 14.916, but, two vaults later, Brazil’s individual all-round silver-medallist Rebeca Andrade scored 15.083 thanks to her difficult two-and-a-half twisting vault. It turned out to be a gold medal performance after America’s Jade Carey, second to Biles in qualifying, disappointed with a 12.416, which put her in last place. Of the rest, the best score was from Korea’s Yeo Seo-Jeong, whose 14.733 secured her the bronze medal behind Skinner. Three days before the vault final, Brazil had never won a women’s gymnastics medal now, thanks to Andrade, they had doubled that total, and also won their first ever gold.

The vault competition in Tokyo was conducted in an unusual manner. As in previous recent Games, the team and individual all-around qualifying served as qualifying for the various apparatus finals. In vault, however, all the competitors in those qualifications did one vault, which counted towards the team and individual events, but 19 competitors did a second vault, effectively competing in a special vault apparatus qualifying, and that is why only 19 competitors are listed in this event.