Time on her hands and a world-class gym at her disposal after the 2020 Olympics were postponed, Simone Biles started experimenting almost as a way to stave off the monotony of training.
Pretty soon a vault she occasionally tinkered with for fun — the Yurchenko double pike — started to look like a vault she could pull off in competition.
So what if it historically had been done only by men? So what if the International Gymnastics Federation seemed intent on not giving the vault a difficulty value commensurate with its complexity?
The vault exists. She can do it.