In gymnastics, the record books have a special kind of page: the ones where a skill stops being described and starts being named — after the woman who first dared it in competition. Simone Biles has filled more of those pages than anyone. This is the story of the vault so hard that no woman had ever even attempted it in competition — until she did it twice, on purpose, so it would carry her name forever.
May 22, 2021, the GK U.S. Classic in Indianapolis. It was Biles’ first competition in over a year and a half — a comeback meet, the kind where most athletes ease back in with the safe routines.
Biles did the opposite. She ran down the vault runway and performed the Yurchenko double pike: a roundoff, a back handspring onto the table, and then two full piked flips in the air before landing.
No woman had ever performed it in competition. Not at a national meet, not at Worlds, not at an Olympics — ever. And she landed it at her first meet back.
Why she had to do it again
Here is the rule that makes this story better than a single headline. In gymnastics, a skill only takes a gymnast’s name when it is landed at an international event. A domestic meet, however historic, doesn’t put your name in the Code of Points. The Yurchenko double pike in Indianapolis was a world-first — but officially, it was still an unnamed vault.
So Biles took it to the biggest stage available. At the 2023 World Championships in Antwerp, she performed it again, in front of the international judges who keep the book — and the FIG entered it in the Code of Points as the “Biles II.”
Her fifth named skill. And not just any entry: the Biles II stands as the hardest vault in the women’s code.
Think about the logic she defied to earn that. A gymnast protecting a comeback plays the percentages — clean, known, safe. Biles instead carried the most dangerous vault any woman had ever attempted into a World Championships, because that was the only room where the vault could become hers. The name was worth the risk. The name is forever.
Paris, gold — and a funeral
The story has a final act with her signature all over it. She won Olympic vault gold with the Biles II in Paris in 2024 — the unnamed impossibility of 2021 now the foundation of an Olympic title.
Then, that September, she staged a light-hearted mock “funeral” to retire it.
That gesture is pure Biles. The funeral wasn’t grief; it was ownership. She introduced the vault, she named it, she won the Olympics with it, and she closed its competitive life herself, on her own schedule, with a joke. Gymnasts will be attempting her vault for decades.
Why this one belongs here
Our page marks firsts — the firsts that change what the next girl believes is available to her. Somewhere there is a young gymnast who will grow up in a sport where the hardest vault in the women’s code is called Biles II, listed in the official book, in black and white, under a Black woman’s name. She will never know a version of the sport where that was impossible. That is what a first actually does: it deletes “impossible” for everybody who comes after.
She didn’t just do the vault. She made sure the book says whose it is.
Join the conversation
FIVE skills carry her name — and this one is the hardest vault in the women’s code. Where does Simone Biles rank among the greatest athletes of ALL time — and which of her firsts meant the most to you? Tell us below.
Source note: The Yurchenko double pike account — first performed by a woman in competition on May 22, 2021, at the GK U.S. Classic in Indianapolis, Biles’ first competition in over a year and a half; performed again at the 2023 World Championships in Antwerp, where the FIG entered it in the Code of Points as the “Biles II,” her fifth named skill; Olympic vault gold in Paris in 2024; and the light-hearted mock “funeral” retiring it that September — is from ESPN and NBC Sports coverage and Essence’s 2023 naming report. On difficulty: the vault’s difficulty value appears differently across sources (provisional and final code figures differ), so this article follows the settled description — the hardest vault in the women’s code — and prints no number.
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