Jade Carey — the 21-year-old who has committed to Oregon State in 2017, deferring entry to train for the Olympics — earned gold during the Monday night women’s floor exercises. Her score of 14.366 gave the U.S. women’s team its fifth medal of the Games, ensuring the six gymnasts who came to Tokyo — Carey, Simone Biles, Sunisa Lee, Jordan Chiles, Grace McCallum, and MyKayla Skinner — will be bringing home well deserved medals.
Carey’s floor exercise victory was a great recovery from the previous night’s mishap during the vault finals when her right foot caught, tripping her as she was preparing her entrance. She avoided injury, but her planned Cheng vault turned into a simple back tuck. She was able to recover in time to complete her second vault, but finished well off the podium.
Her father and coach, Brian Carey, was waiting for her with open arms as Carey felt her defeat. Knowing his daughter had less than a day to regroup for the floor finals, he offered her these words of wisdom.
“I told her, ‘You know, right now, you feel like yesterday was the worst day of your life, but today can be your best day. So just don’t give up. Keep going,’” Carey said. “And she killed it.”
Carey exploded off the floor. Her tumbling is as dynamic as anyone’s in the world. Currently she is working on a triple-twisting double-layout element that will be given the single highest difficulty value of anything currently being done in the sport.
While it’s not quite ready to be unveiled, Carey didn’t need it for her victory — feeling that she performed the best routine of her career.
She could hear her teammates cheering her on during her routine.
“They were honestly the best teammates ever especially [Sunday] night,” said Carey.
They aren’t technically her teammates though. Carey earned a spot in Tokyo by taking advantage of an offer by the Federation Internationale de Gymnastique or International Gymnastics Federation (FIG). The sport’s governing body made a provision for the 2020 Games which allowed athletes to lock up an individual nominative spot if they racked up enough points at World Cup events.
The Careys spent 16 months flying to different continents to compete. They formally accepted the spot on the eve of the U.S. Olympic trials, even though they knew it meant she would be unable to compete in the four-woman team that ended up winning silver.
This turned out to be a one-time only offer, as FIG has already abandoned the practice. They will be returning the team sizes to five women per country for the 2024 Games in Paris.
But all the paperwork and politics paid off when Carey performed her routine that won her the gold and made her teammates and father proud.
“It was definitely hard sometimes,” said the younger Carey. “I’m really glad that we stuck with our decision and did what we did. It was for the better.”
Vanessa Ferrari of Italy earned silver giving Italy its first women’s gymnastics medal since 1928. Angelina Melnikova of the team representing the Russian Olympic Committee and Mai Murakami of Japan were awarded bronze after finishing with identical scores.
By: Kayla Mosley
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