A Yurchenko is a style of vault in gymnastics that begins with a round-off onto the springboard, followed by a back handspring onto the vaulting table, and finishes with a flip off the table. It’s the most common vault family in elite gymnastics today and the foundation for nearly every high-difficulty vault you’ll see at the Olympics. The name comes from Soviet gymnast Natalia Yurchenko, who first performed it at the 1982 World Cup in Zagreb.
How the Vault Works
What makes a Yurchenko distinctive is its entry. Instead of running straight at the vault table and jumping forward off the springboard (the way vaulting worked for decades), the gymnast does a round-off just before the board. This means they hit the springboard traveling backward, then perform a back handspring onto the table. From there, they launch into a backward flip of some kind before landing.
The vault breaks down into five phases: the round-off, board contact, pre-flight (the back handspring onto the table), table contact, and post-flight (the flip and landing). The critical challenge is converting forward running speed into the rotational energy needed for the round-off entry. The gymnast sprints down the runway, then has to redirect all that linear momentum into angular motion in a very small space. Getting this transition right determines everything that follows.
During the round-off phase alone, a gymnast’s hands absorb vertical forces of about 2.4 times their body weight, with loading rates roughly 50% higher than a standard round-off on floor exercise. That gives you a sense of how much power is being channeled through the upper body before the gymnast even reaches the table.
Why It Changed Gymnastics
Before 1982, vaults were almost exclusively forward-entry skills. Gymnasts ran, jumped off the board facing forward, pushed off the horse (as it was called then), and did front flips or twists. The Yurchenko approach opened up an entirely new direction of movement, making backward somersaults and combinations possible off the vault.
When Natalia Yurchenko debuted the skill at the 1982 World Cup, the crowd immediately recognized it as something unprecedented. “It is something people did not expect to see, something very different,” Yurchenko later recalled. She had to perform it at a World or European-level competition for the skill to be officially submitted and approved. That event in Zagreb became the moment that reshaped the event.
The Yurchenko entry made higher difficulty scores accessible because a backward takeoff off the table generates more rotational potential than a forward one. Gymnasts could now add more flips and twists in the air. Within a few years, Yurchenko-style vaults dominated the event, and they still do more than four decades later.
The Different Variations
The Yurchenko is really a family of vaults. The entry (round-off, back handspring onto the table) stays the same, but what happens after the gymnast leaves the table changes dramatically. The post-flight phase is where difficulty increases, and the international scoring system assigns each variation a specific difficulty value.
- Yurchenko layout: A single backward flip with a straight body. This is the baseline version, with a difficulty value of 3.60.
- Yurchenko full: A layout with a 360-degree twist, valued at 4.20. This is common at the elite level and was long considered a competitive standard.
- Yurchenko double twist: A layout with two full twists (720 degrees), valued at 5.00. This is a high-level vault that contends for medals at major competitions.
- Yurchenko double pike: Two full backward flips in a pike position (bent at the hips, legs straight). This is the vault Simone Biles made famous, now officially named the “Biles II.” It’s widely considered the hardest vault in women’s gymnastics.
The progression from layout to double pike represents a massive leap in physical demand. Each additional flip or twist requires the gymnast to generate more height and rotation off the table while still controlling the landing.
What Makes the Double Pike So Difficult
Simone Biles performed the Yurchenko double pike at the 2024 Summer Olympics during the team event, cementing it as one of the defining skills in modern gymnastics. The physics of the vault illustrate why so few gymnasts can do it.
Once Biles leaves the vault table, the only force acting on her is gravity, which pulls straight down through her center of mass. Because gravity doesn’t create any rotational force, her angular momentum is locked in from the moment she’s airborne. She can’t gain or lose rotation. What she can do is change how fast she spins by changing her body shape. By folding into a tight pike (roughly a 90-degree bend at the hips), she reduces her moment of inertia, which speeds up her rotation. She completes two full backward flips in this position, then opens up to slow her rotation just enough to land on her feet. The margin for error is extraordinarily thin.
How Judges Score It
Every Yurchenko vault starts with a difficulty value based on its variation. From there, judges subtract points for execution errors. The deductions give you a clear picture of what “good” looks like on this vault.
Judges watch for a straight body position throughout the pre-flight and post-flight. Any arching or piking of the body (outside of intentional tuck or pike vaults) costs up to 0.20 per phase. Bent knees cost up to 0.10 per phase. Leg separation, where the legs drift apart during flips or twists, brings deductions of up to 0.30. Crossed legs and other form breaks carry similar penalties. On landing, steps, hops, and falls all add to the deduction total.
The result is a final score that combines the vault’s built-in difficulty with how cleanly the gymnast performs it. A gymnast doing a lower-difficulty Yurchenko with perfect form can sometimes outscore one attempting a harder variation with visible errors.
Safety Equipment for Round-Off Entry
Because the Yurchenko involves a blind entry (the gymnast is turning backward onto the springboard), it carries specific safety requirements. Competition organizers must provide a vaulting board safety collar, a padded barrier placed around the springboard to prevent the gymnast from missing the board during the round-off. This rule applies in both men’s and women’s gymnastics for any round-off entry vault. Gymnasts also use a hand mat on the runway to mark and cushion their round-off contact point.
These precautions exist because the consequences of a mistimed round-off are severe. Missing the board or catching it at the wrong angle during a backward entry can send a gymnast into the table headfirst. The safety collar and hand mat reduce that risk, though the Yurchenko still demands precise timing that takes years of training to develop consistently.