After a two-year hiatus, Simone Biles was named The Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for her mat, vault and balance beam performance.
Biles became the sixth woman to win the AP title three times with her remarkable comeback, which included a sixth global all-around gold medal and a record-tying eighth U.S. national championship. In the poll by a group of sports media experts, the 26-year-old seven-time Olympian was followed by Iowa basketball star Caitlin Clark and World Cup champion Spanish soccer player Aitana Bonmati. Biles won the AP honor in 2016 and 2019.
In October, Biles became the first woman to land a Yurchenko double pike vault, a roundoff back handspring with two saltos in the piked position, at the 2023 World Artistic Gymnastic Championships in Antwerp, Belgium. The vault, renamed The Biles II, is the most difficult jump in the women’s scoring code and had a difficulty score of 6.4 points ahead of the championship. In 2022, the most challenging vault performed scored 5.6, according to NBC Sports.
The Biles I, its predecessor, was named for Biles after she competed successfully in it at the 2018 World Championships in Doha, Qatar. It is a roundoff, half twist on, front double full off.
A skill must be competed in an international competition to be named after a gymnast. Two other gymnastic skills — one on the floor and the other on the balancing beam — are named after Biles. She now has five gymnastic skills named after her, including this most recent one.
After her qualifying session, Biles finished first with an all-around score of 58.865. As for the United States as a team, they qualified with a score of 171.395.
