Biles creates history with ‘Biles II’ skill
Stuttgart (Germany), Oct. 6: USA gymnastics queen Simone Biles made history on her opening appearance at the 2019 world championships on Saturday by landing a triple double skill on the floor which will be named “Biles II”.
The 22-year-old Texan then pulled off a doubletwisting double tuck dismount off the beam which will be known simply as “The Biles”.
Biles, who now has four skills named after her, is set to add to her record tally in Stuttgart of 14 gold medals at her fifth world championships.
Her “Biles II” came when she landed a tripletwisting double back on the floor during qualification for the team event.
Earlier, the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) gave the beam skill an ‘H’ rating, which Biles thought should be higher.
She made her feelings clear by tweeting “haha bullshit” over a diagram of the double double.
USA Gymnastics was also unhappy with the grading, tweeting “we believe the skill should be given the value it merits”.
“It felt really good to nail it,” said Biles.
“It’s hard, you have to reward it. I still wanted to go out there and get it named after me for myself
and then we’ll see what happens.”
On Saturday, Biles qualified first for the allaround, second for the vault, second for the beam and floor with a seventhbest on the uneven bars.
“I still feel like I can do better, but the aim tonight wasn’t to do great just to do well and I feel like I accomplished that and I’ve made it into the finals, all of them now I guess.
“I get really nervous before I go out and my legs turn to stone, which scares me because I’m supposed to be good on that event, but I had a lot of energy so that helped.”
Biles’s overall tally of 20 worlds medals ties her with Russia’s Svetlana Khorkina for the most won by a woman.
Indians disappoint
Indian women had a dismal outing at the World Artistic Gymnastic Championships as none of them could qualify for the finals of individual events here.
In the women’s all-round qualification, Pranati Nayak and Pranati Das finished 127th and 132nd after scoring 45.832 and 45.248 respectively.
In the vault event, Pranati Nayak scored 14.200 in her first attempt but got a neutral deduction in the second attempt which ruled her out of the Finals. She finished 27th in the vault qualification.
In the uneven bars, Pranati Nayak, Pranati Das and Aruna Reddy scored 10.566, 9.916 and 8.925 to finish 164th, 182nd and 193rd.