The crowd was much thinner in the Rio Olympic Arena, but that didn’t matter for U.S. gymnast Simone Biles. After clinching gold in the team and the all-around events, she added to her gilded collection with a score of 15.966. That makes Biles the first U.S. female gymnast to ever win a gold in vault.
It’s also personally satisfying; Biles has never won gold on the event at her past three world championships.
“There is a lot of satisfaction I have in winning gold on the vault finally,” she said. “I’m just super proud because I was able to upgrade my second vault, which was exactly what I needed to do so I was very excited.”
Teammates Gabby Douglas and Madison Kocian competed on uneven bars. Douglas went first, just missing a perfect 180 on a handstand and taking a jump on her landing to earn 15.066. Kocian, from the same gym where 2008 all-around champion Nastia Liukin trained in Texas, qualified with the highest score and and flew high but no high enough. Her score of 15.833 wasn’t enough to best Russia’s Aliya Mustafina, who earned 15.900. Douglas finished seventh, the second time she failed to medal in the uneven bars final at the Olympics. For both Douglas and Kocian, that’s their last Olympic event; Biles will go on to compete in the beam and floor events.
How U.S. Women Gymnasts Became the World’s Best
Alex Naddour earned the U.S. its other medal of the night, a bronze on pommel horse. It was a long time coming, not just for Naddour, who was an alternate on the 2012 and didn’t compete, but for the U.S. men, who haven’t won a medal on horse in 32 years.
While Biles easily captured the gold in vault, things also didn’t go as well for the men’s all-around champion, Kohei Uchimura, who stepped out of bounds on his first tumbling run. His teammate, world champion Kenzo Shirai, also had problems, stumbling on the landings of all of this tumbling runs.
The Brazilians who did make it to the arena for more gymnastics were given a nice surprise—two medals in the men’s floor event, from Diego Hypolito and Arthur Mariano who earned silver and bronze behind Britain’s Max Whitlock. They become only the second and third Brazilians to earn gymnastics medals, behind Arthur Zanetti who won gold in rings in 2012.
This article originally appeared on Time.com
