On the vault runway at the Bercy Arena, Simone Biles secured a third gold medal inside four days and her seventh Olympic title overall. The victory on 3 August 2024 moved her past the mark she had shared with Soviet great Larisa Latynina among female gymnasts. No gymnast in history has now won more Olympic golds.
She opened with her own Yurchenko double pike — the Biles II — the highest-valued vault in the women’s code. A Cheng followed, its block struck with familiar precision. The average score left no room for dispute, building a margin that Rebeca Andrade of Brazil, the Tokyo vault champion, could not close with execution alone.
Three golds inside four days
The vault crown completed a Paris sweep that began with team gold on 30 July. Two days later she reclaimed the all-around title she first won in Rio eight summers ago. The vault final delivered a third gold in swift succession, each one anchored in a different chapter of her return.
The arc from Tokyo to Paris remains the defining passage of her career. In 2021 she withdrew mid-competition when the twisties stripped her air awareness, returning only for beam bronze before stepping away entirely. The Paris haul — team, all-around, vault — is a rebuttal written in landings, not words.
A vault that carries her name
The Yurchenko double pike she deployed was first landed at the 2023 world championships in Antwerp, where it was codified as the Biles II. No other woman has performed it on a major international stage. Its difficulty value sits above every other vault in the code, and Biles competed it here when the stakes were at their highest.
That Antwerp meet also delivered a record sixth world all-around title and a career total of 30 world championship medals, the most of any gymnast in history. The vault gold in Paris adds to a collection that already includes five skills named in the code, four Rio golds, and an Olympic return that rewrote every cautionary script about comebacks.
The runway in Paris gave her a third gold at these Games. It also gave the sport a moment that needed no embellishment — just the run, the block, the flight, and the stick.
