TOKYO, Japan — By now, even casual sports fans know gymnastics superstar Simone Biles has a trick up her sleeve for the Tokyo Olympics: the Yurchenko double pike. But after passing on the chance to compete it during the qualification round, the only question is, when will she debut it?
It's a game of weighing the risk vs. the reward.
Biles is set to vault five times during Olympic competition. She got two of those chances out of the way Sunday during the qualification round. She will compete one vault during the team final Tuesday, one vault in the individual all-around final Thursday, and two vaults in the individual vault final Sunday, Aug. 1.
Biles likely didn't want to risk debuting a new move during the team qualification for two reasons:
- To ensure Team USA safely made it on to the finals by competing the vaults she has more experience with
- To ensure she qualified for the individual vault final, giving her a shot at gold
Tuesday's team final is a three-up, three-count format. Three gymnasts on each team compete on each event, and all three scores will count toward the team score. With such little room for error, and only one opportunity to vault, there is some risk with doing it then.
But there is one advantage to the team final: the one-touch warmup. It's the chance gymnasts get to test the equipment just before they compete. The rules don't allow for a one-touch warmup during the individual vault final — it's a policy Biles has previously said she's not a fan of.
"I think that it’s kind of dangerous, given everything that everybody's doing," Biles said during a Team USA media summit in April.
That's why the individual vault final likely won't be the time Biles competes the new skill either. Without a one-touch warmup, most gymnasts prefer to compete skills that are nearly automatic for them.
"You want to do something that you can do almost without a warmup, and this is not a skill that you can do without a warmup," Biles' coach Laurent Landi told NBC Sports.
The individual all-around final, like the team final, allows the warmup. Landi told NBC Sports going for it in either of those two rounds of competition seems like "the smart thinking." If Biles successfully lands the vault at the Olympics, it will officially become a new skill and be named after her in the Code of Points.
Biles currently has four other skills named after her — two on floor, one on beam, and a different vault that she debuted at the 2018 World Championships
The U.S. women's gymnastics team will compete in the team final Tuesday at 6:45 a.m. ET. Watch it live on NBCOlympics.com.