Simone Biles appears to have held a funeral for one of her most dangerous gymnastics moves.
The 11-time Olympic medalist posted a photoshoot on Instagram this week showing her seated on a vault surrounded by white flowers.
“Rest in peace yurchenko double pike,” she captioned it.
“Gone, but literally never forgotten,” USA Gymnastics commented, adding gravestone and flower emojis.
The move was named the Biles II in 2023 after she became the first to pull it off in an international competition.
Biles said at the Paris Olympics last month that she would sunset the extremely difficult maneuver after she performed it in the all-around and vault finals, securing gold in both events.
She didn’t rule out going to another Olympics, though.
“Is this my last? Definitely the Yurchenko double pike. I mean, I kind of nailed that one,” she said at the time. “So, you know, never say never. The next Olympics is at home. So you just never know.”
Only a handful of gymnasts in the world have pulled off the vault, which gets its name from former Soviet gymnast Natalia Yurchenko. She pioneered the move in the 1980s.
“It’s such a joy to see that something that you started doing, getting into such a progress and [allowing] other people to compete with more difficulties and raise the bar even higher and higher,” Yurchenko said in 2021 of seeing Biles do the move.
“I was dreaming about seeing it. It was kind of tears of joy because you create something and you wait for the future generation to use it,” she added. “I don’t think it can be better. It was just so amazing. I was amazed that we have Simone Biles, who can raise us all to that kind of level.”
