Simone Biles Officially Retires Her Yurchenko Double Pike After Paris 2024 Gold
"Rest in peace, Yurchenko double pike."
Published Sept. 4 2024, 6:40 p.m. ET
Gold medal–winning Olympian Simone Biles has five different gymnastics moves named after her, thanks to her continued success at landing high-difficulty moves. But it seems she's ready to put one of those moves to rest.
In a post on Instagram, Simone held a mock funeral for her Yurchenko double pike, the move that landed her a gold medal in the vault event at the 2024 Paris Olympics. The move, which has been renamed to the "Biles II (vault)" after she was the first woman in history to land it during a competition, is now confirmed to not make another appearance during any of her upcoming competitions.
Simone Biles held a funeral for the Yurchenko double pike.
The Instagram post, made on Sept. 3, showed Simone in an all-white track suit seated on a vault, surrounded by gorgeous bouquets of white flowers.
"rest in peace yurchenko double pike," she captioned the post, confirming once and for all that she would not be doing the move in a competition again.
Simone had previously alluded to her decision to retire the move in an interview following the 2024 Paris Olympics. She's previously discussed getting the "twisties" while competing in the vault event during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which resulted in her decision to step away from that year's competition. This Instagram post has solidified that she won't be competing on the vault at the same difficulty that she has before.
"Definitely [my last] Yurchenko double pike — I mean I kinda nailed that one," she said in August 2024 in response to being asked if it was the last Olympics she would perform in the vault event, per CGTN Sports Scene. "Never say never. The next Olympics is at home, so you just never know. But I am getting really old."
