
(CNN)Three up, three down. Simone Biles just keeps killing it.
The 19-year-old all-around world champion added to her medal case Sunday, leaping to her third gold in the Rio Olympics and conducting an absolute clinic in the vault discipline.
Her score of 15.966, the average of her two vaults, was too much for the competition. Her nearest competitor, Russia"s Maria Paseka, who won the event at the 2015 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Glasgow, Scotland, didn"t appear to be on the same mat.
Biles" first vault was an Amanar. You may recall the terminology from McKayla Maroney"s vaults four years ago. The eternally unimpressed acrobat earned a silver with the move in the London Games.
What the heck"s an Amanar?
After doing a roundoff onto the springboard, the gymnast does a back handspring onto the table, then a flip with two-and-a-half twists in the straight body position (thanks, NBC, for help with the jargon)
Still, Hong finished second, ahead of Biles, at the 2015 world championships. And just before the Rio Games began, video surfaced of Hong performing a triple-twisting Yurchenko -- a sort of unicorn when it comes to vaults -- with the help of her coach. If she pulled it off in competition, it would henceforth be known as "the Hong."
It"s like an Amanar with an extra half twist. Biles has reportedly called the move "crazy."
After a solid score on her first vault, Hong went for the unicorn, but she couldn"t finish the third rotation and fell backwards upon landing. Her final aggregate score of 14.9 put her in sixth place for the competition.
Eyes on two more prizes
Biles now has her sights set on her final two competitions: balance beam on Monday and floor exercise on Tuesday.
If she can win both -- and she registered the top scores in both events during the individual all-around, where she earned another gold medal -- she will tie American swimmer Michael Phelps" 2016 haul of five gold medals (he also won a silver in these Games).
But perhaps more importantly for her sport, she will become the first American gymnast to take home five medals since Anton Heida did it in the 1904 Summer Olympics.
We"ll save you the calculator search again: That"s 112 years. No big deal.
Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/14/sport/simone-biles-third-gold-medal-gymnastics-vault/index.html





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