The US gymnast performed her double pike vault in podium training, three years after the trauma of Tokyo
In her third rotation of the day, Biles flitted down the vault runway before launching herself on to the springboard with a back handspring.
The 27-year-old increased her upward momentum by rebounding off the top of the vault table and wrapping in two piked backwards somersaults.
he landed with her chest upright, her feet completely still: “Perfect! We’ll take this one in a heartbeat. It was really good,” said a smiling Cécile Canqueteau-Landi, one of Biles’s coaches, afterwards.
Days before the gymnastics competition begins, Biles has already produced one of the greatest pieces of gymnastics the Olympics has ever seen.
The Biles II requires no twisting and so last year, as she began her comeback after taking a break from the sport, Biles opted to re-introduce the vault in part because she still lacked confidence in her twisting following the mental block she suffered in Tokyo.