Olympic gymnast has four skills named after her

Simone Biles is one of the most decorated gymnasts of all time, and one of the greatest Olympians ever.

Biles will compete for the U.S. for a third time at the Summer Games at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, hoping to add to her seven Olympic medals, including gold in the individual all-around at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio. She is also a nine-time national all-around champion for USA Gymnastics and a 30-time world medalist.

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Indeed, Biles is so great that she is one of the few select gymnasts to have a gymnastic movement named after her by the Women’s Artistic Gymnastics Code of Points. In fact, she has four movements named after her.

Biles, 27, is the oldest gymnast on a U.S. team since 1952, when Marie Margaret Hoesly was the oldest competitor at 35. Age doesn’t seem to slow Biles down in a sport typically dominated by younger athletes, as she won her sixth world all-around championship at the 2023 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Antwerp, Belgium

Now she and the US gymnastics team are looking to take revenge after their inconsistent performances at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, which saw Biles withdraw due to the “bends.”

Here are all the skills named after Biles in the run-up to the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris:

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Which movements are named after Simone Biles?

Floor: Biles (double layout half out)

This is considered Biles’ signature move. For this move, she spins twice in the air, keeping her body in a stretched position. Before landing, Biles does a half-twist (meaning she doesn’t know where she’ll land each time). Biles performed the move at the 2013 World Championships, and the move is named after her.

She wasn’t the first gymnast to perform the move, however, as London Phillips performed it eight years earlier in her home country. Trinity Thomas successfully performed the “Biles” at the 2019 US National Championships, and Gabrielle Clark completed the move in 2021 at the LA Gold Gymnastics competition in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Floor: Biles II (Triple twist, double somersault backwards)

The skill requires Biles to jump back into the air twice and spin three times at the same time (known as a triple-double). It also requires her to develop tremendous strength to launch high enough into the air to complete all of her tumbling moves in a timely manner. Biles began training the move in 2013 and debuted it at the 2019 U.S. Classic.

Biles debuted the move during qualifying for the 2019 World Championships, and the move was named after her. The move is rated “J” in difficulty, making it the highest-rated skill. No other woman has completed the skill in competition.

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Balance Beam: Biles (double twist, double somersault back dismount)

This skill is perhaps Biles’ most controversial move.

For this move, Biles spins twice at the same time while rotating twice. After Biles performed the move at the 2019 World Championships, the judges downgraded its value due to the danger involved, in an attempt to discourage more gymnasts from attempting it. Biles immediately filed a protest, calling the decision bulls— on social media.

“It’s so unfair, because am I in a league of my own? Yes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t reward me for what I do. They keep asking us to do harder things and give us more artistry, give us more difficult skills,” Biles said, according to NBC Sports. “So we do that, and then they don’t give it credit, and I don’t think that’s fair.”

She also pointed out that giving the skill an H rating would make gymnasts less likely to attempt it. Giving it a J rating, she said, would be something they would likely “aspire to.”

The FIG Women’s Technical Committee issued a statement on October 4, 2019:

“When assigning values to the new elements, the WTC takes into account many different aspects; the risk, the safety of the gymnasts and the technical direction of the discipline. … There is an additional risk when landing double somersaults for beam jumps (with/without twists), including a possible landing on the neck.”

The controversy didn’t stop Biles from performing the move, as she did on the first night of the 2019 World Championships. The move was named after her.

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Jump: Biles (Yurchenko half on with two twists ― Cheng plus a half twist)

The skill is a series of movements that begins with a roundoff and transitions into a backhand jump onto the vault. From there, Biles performs a half turn and spins twice in the air before landing. Due to the power and precision required for the spins and for a safe landing, the vault has a high degree of difficulty.

Biles demonstrated her vault during a selection camp for the 2018 World Championships and subsequently debuted the move when she competed at the 2018 World Championships, hence the move’s name. At a difficulty rating of 6.0, it is the most difficult vault in women’s artistic gymnastics, along with the Produnova.