Rebeca Andrade came back from a three-year break and went straight to the top. The Brazilian won gold in the vault final at the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Rotterdam, Netherlands, on Saturday (24), posting an average score of 14.466. It is her third world title on the apparatus and her tenth career world medal.
Andrade opened the final with a 14.400 on her first vault and added 14.133 on the second. That was enough to beat an American one-two behind her: Claire Pease took silver (14.233) and Skye Blakely bronze (14.166), according to ge. Watching from the stands in Rotterdam was Simone Biles, Andrade's longtime rival and friend.
The win came from a cool-headed reading of the event. A vault score combines the difficulty of the acrobatic element with the quality of the execution, and Andrade bet on the second half of that equation: she performed vaults she fully controls, with clean landings, instead of gambling on harder skills that pay more but punish any mistake. The plan was already visible in Monday's (19) qualification, when she led the field with 14.400 on her Amanar-style double-twisting Yurchenko and 14.266 on the vault known as the Lopez.
Speaking to TV Globo afterward, she acknowledged the choice:
"I did not do the most difficult vaults of my career, but it was enough to win gold, and I am satisfied."
She also confirmed she is done with floor exercise: "I do not want to do floor anymore. I stand by that. I choose to respect that, and I believe I have the right to respect it too."
Road to Los Angeles
The gold caps a carefully planned return. Andrade had not competed officially since 2024, after the Paris Olympics and the Brazilian nationals, and skipped the 2025 Worlds in Jakarta, saying at the time the year was for her physical and mental health. Her coach, Francisco Porath, called the pause "active de-training" and pointed to 2026, when Olympic qualification for the Los Angeles 2028 Games begins, as the real target.
Andrade now owns ten medals across four World Championships: four golds, four silvers and two bronzes. Before Rotterdam, she had won vault in Kitakyushu (2021) and Antwerp (2023), plus the all-around crown in Liverpool (2022). Brazil has one more medal shot on Sunday, when Flávia Saraiva contests the balance beam final, according to ge.