You’re like, ‘Am I made out for this?'"
she ruminated in an interview withVanity Fair.
She’s also not the only one.
Like many Olympic events, gymnastics is actually a team sport though each member competes individually.
Let’s meet the amazing 2024 USA Olympic gymnastics team members who will be competing in Paris.
Jade Carey
Paris won’t beJade Carey’s first time at the Olympics.
“It feels like everything I’ve ever dreamed of,” she toldAccess Hollywoodafter clinching the win.
“Being able to turn it around and win gold on floor the very next day?
I feel like it almost makes it a little bit better,” she said.
Leading up to the 2024 Olympic Trials, Carey struggled a bit in various competitions.
However, she toldOlympics.comthat her difficult year only meant that she had to change her mindset.
“It was really just that and me not feeling confident.
It was definitely a big struggle, but at the end of the day, we learned a lot.
Sure enough, her hard work paid off.
She toldInternational Gymnast Mediathat she’d almost thrown in the towel.
“But honestly, this decision I wouldn’t trade for the world.”
Gold or bust.”
Still, she said, “I loved every last minute of it.
If I could, I would go back and do it all over again.”
She stuck around, however, choosing to partner with an organization called Brown Girls Do Gymnastics.
“The diversity part of everything, I like giving back to any community.
I’m a giver,” she said.
“I’m an Olympian,” Chiles said.
“I will forever be an Olympian.”
She later toldOlympics.comthat the moment was the culmination of a lifelong dream, even thoughshe once almost quit gymnastics.
“I never wanted to go for the fame or the money or the attention.
It was just always my biggest dream.”
Unfortunately, in the years since Tokyo, she has gone through some very public health struggles.
“It affected my whole body and how I looked and how I was feeling.”
Ultimately, she was diagnosed with an incurable kidney disease.
Thanks to various treatments, her diagnosis hasn’t stopped her from competing.
This year, Lee will once again return to the Olympics as a member of Team USA.
After all, the rising star is only 16 years old, as of this writing.
Still, she has quite the pedigree.
Rivera has been training with Valeri and Anna Liukin, parents of formerOlympic gold medalist Nastia Liukin.
“I never would have thought I would be training with Nastia’s parents and especially with Gabby!
It’s crazy because she gives me so many tips and such encouragement.”
In an interview withNBC Sports, her father Henry Rivera gushed, “No words.
I can’t describe everything that is going through my head.
It’s the biggest joy in the world.”
“It feels so surreal,” she said.
“I cannot believe that I’m here right now.
It’s just all my hard work has been paying off.”
“As of right now, I haven’t completely mastered both vaults.
“It doesn’t feel real right now.
Paul Juda
In 2023, college student Paul Juda spoke withNBC Sportsabout his rising gymnastics career.
Juda explained, “I think every kid and every good gymnast has an Olympic flag.
It’s always good to remind yourself to push just the one little percent, you know.”
Yeah, I can’t even put it into words.”
“I was like: ‘There’s the future right there.
This guy’s got it,'” Mikulak said.
However, during the lead-up to Paris, disaster struck.
OnInstagram, Malone revealed that he’d been seriously injured while competing in Germany.
“I took a pretty nasty fall during high bar finals in Stuttgart,” he wrote.
He had a fracture, a torn LCL and PCL, and both cartilage and meniscus damage.
He won the U.S.
I’m just letting loose a little bit more, having a little more fun.”
Later that month, he secured a spot on Team USA in Paris.
“It was kind of nerve-racking because they announced my name last.
So it kind of scared me a little bit,” he toldNBC Sports.
“I’m over the moon.”
Stephen Nedoroscik
While most Olympic gymnasts compete in multiple events, Stephen Nedoroscik is different.
Nedoroscik, however, lays it all on the line when he performs on the pommel horse.
Specializing, he said, has worked out.
“It was kind of just a route that no one had taken before,” he revealed.
“I had no idea what was going to happen.”
In the aftermath of the competition, he spoke withGymnastics Nowabout how it felt.
“And I did.”
“You’re supposed to be in fourth place,” he remembered thinking in an interview withTIME.
But he wasn’t in fourth place; he’d managed to come in third despite the mistake.
When Richard medaled at the Gymnastics World Championships, he became the youngest American gymnast ever to do so.
