Simone Biles won her third gold medal of the Rio Olympics in the vault final, scoring 15.900 for her first vault, 16.033 for her second and an average of 15.966 to clinch the top spot.
In second place were Russia’s Maria Paseka and Switzerland’s Giulia Steingruber.
Paseka, the 2015 world champion on vault, earned a score of 15.253. Steingruber became Switzerland’s first female gymnast ever to win an Olympic medal with her score of 15.216.
Shortly before the Olympics started, a video of North Korea’s Hong Un-Jong surfaced and immediately started chatter that Hong could both make gymnastics history and outscore Biles. In training, she was seen attempting the triple-twisting Yurchenko, a more difficult version of the Amanar vault made famous by McKayla Maroney. Instead of doing two-and-a-half twists like in the Amanar, Hong was doing three full twists. If she successfully landed it in competition, it would be named the Hong.
After a clean first vault in the final, Hong gave the triple-twisting Yurchenko everything she had. She couldn’t get it all the way around though, landing short of three full rotations and then falling backwards.