Paris 2024: US gymnast Chiles' long journey back to Oly is rooted in joy

Jordan Chiles still remembers the first time someone handed her a ribbon for something she did at a gymnastics meet. She was maybe 7 or 8 and a Level 4, the entry point to competition for the thousands of kids who take up the sport.

The details of what Chiles did that day are fuzzy at best. The jolt of adrenaline that sprinted through her as she caressed the first of what has become countless gold ribbons is not.

"I was like, Oh, this is what it feels like to win? Okay, I got this. This is cool,'' Chiles said.

It still is, only Chiles' definition of winning has evolved nearly two decades after that initial blush with success.

Sure, she remains intensely competitive, a trait Chiles says she inherited from her mother Gina. Yet Chiles realized a while ago the competition she faces whenever she steps onto the podium doesn't come from the outside, but from within.

When Chiles walks into Bercy Arena in Paris on July 28 to begin a second trip to the Olympics very few outside of her inner circle saw coming when 2024 began, her goal won't be to beat anyone but to vanquish a memory.

Don't get her wrong. Chiles cherishes the silver medal that the four-woman U.S team earned at the Tokyo Games three years ago on a memorable night in which good friend Simone Biles removed herself from the lineup in the middle of the meet to focus on her mental health.

"We won that silver," Chiles said, "We had so much grace and power and leadership in that moment. I was just so proud of everybody."

It's what happened two days prior during qualifying, however, that lingers. Chiles fell off the balance beam that night inside the eerily quiet Ariake Gymnastics Centre and put together a sloppy routine on bars that was far from her best.

Chiles didn't come particularly close to earning a spot in any of the individual finals and remembers the tearful phone call in the aftermath to Gina half a world away back in Houston after COVID-19 pandemic protocols prevented family and friends from making the trip to Japan.

"I was like, This is crazy, I failed,'' Chiles said.

The decision to make a run at the Paris Games was born in that moment. And it had nothing to do with coming home with just one medal in her carry-on. She had let the weight of it all leave her overwhelmed and stressed at a time she should have been enjoying the realization of a dream. It just never really felt that way.

"That wasn't my best performance," she said, "I knew I could give more."

Long road back Chiles had no idea at the time how much it would take to get back.

The last three years have been a whirlwind. She enrolled at UCLA in the fall of 2021 and spent two seasons leaning into the team environment and freedom of expression that college gymnastics provide, particularly on floor exercise, where the hip-hop-inspired routine she competed as a sophomore went viral and racked up perfect 10s in equal measure.

She left the Bruins and returned to World Champions Centre in Houston in the summer of 2023 to begin preparations for Paris, a transition that proved harder than expected both personally and professionally.

Chiles lost her aunt, Crystal Oliver, and grandfather Gene Velasquez, in 2023.

"They always believed in me before they passed, that if I could do (one Olympics) I could do another," Chiles said.
 

 

And so she pressed on even as she grieved, a process she admitted after the U.S. Olympic trials she is still going through. She honored Velasquez with a tattoo on her left forearm that reads "Where you are, I have been. Where I am, you will be."

That's why the tears flowed so freely when Chiles heard her name among the five called at the end of the U.S. gymnastics trials last month. The last 15 months have been a roller coaster, emotionally, mentally and physically.

Turns out she missed her college teammates more than she imagined. Her elite skills were slow(ish) to return. She was disappointed when she wasn't selected for the world championship team last fall, a decision she knew was right based on where she was at the time.

Battling injuries Gina Chiles describes the journey her daughter has been on lately as pure grit. That's not a proud parent pumping up their child. It's the reality.

Jordan missed Winter Cup in February the first tune-up of the year with a sprained shoulder. About three weeks later she suffered a bone bruise and partially tore the lateral collateral ligament on the outside of her knee.

"I was like, I'm done. I'm over this. I'm not doing any more. This is not it,'' Chiles said.

The lure of quitting passed, replaced with the realization that the downtime provided her with an opportunity to upgrade her uneven bars, the only one of the four events where the stress on the lower body is minimal.

She also learned to let everything go and practice what she so often preaches to younger gymnasts, whom she tells to write your story, write your chapters, and they're going to turn out how you want them to turn out.

No matter how the run-up to Paris went, she understood that certain things were never going to change.

"I am a world champion. I will forever be a world champion. I'm an Olympian. I will forever be an Olympian," she said, "Those titles will never be stripped away from me."