Picture by Buda Mendes/Getty Images
At 29 years old, USA Gymnastics’ Donnell Whittenburg is gearing up to compete at his third Olympic Trials, where he will attempt to land his name on Team USA’s coveted roster for the very first time.
At his first Trials eight years ago, the Baltimore-native was painstakingly close as he was named as an alternate for the Olympic Games Rio 2016. He traveled to Brazil with the team, but was never given the opportunity to suit up and step onto the Olympic stage.
In 2020, Whittenburg failed to make the Olympic roster altogether.
Ahead of day one of competition at the 2024 U.S. Olympic Team Trials - Gymnastics, Whittenburg told Olympics.com why he keeps coming back, saying the Olympic Games have been “the dream ever since 2016.
“It’s been ingrained in the back of my head,” he continued. “You were almost there. You could have been there. So why not?”
After nearly a decade of resilience and perseverance, Whittenburg now has another shot at Olympic glory, and he’s excited.
“This team has so much depth and so much talent that we'll be showing here this weekend. So I just can't wait for these guys to share this experience with me because there's nothing like competing at Olympic trials.”
The men’s competition kicks off on 27 June in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the Men’s U.S. Olympic Team for Paris 2024 will be named after day two of competition on Saturday (29 June).
Donnell Whittenburg of Team USA competes on the Horizontal bar during the 2022 Gymnastics World Championships on October 31, 2022 in Liverpool, England.
For some, hearing the word ‘no’ means accepting that it wasn’t meant to be and moving on.
For Whittenburg, hearing ‘no’ is like throwing gasoline on a fire.
“For me personally, I feel like this competition is probably the hardest,” he said, acknowledging the stakes of this weekend and knowing that he will either walk out of Minneapolis with a decades-long dream that has finally come true, or heartbreak once again.
Either way, Whittenburg will walk onto the stage at one of the most-high stakes gymnastics competitions and give everything he has to finally turn those dreams into a reality.
“I know I worked my butt off to get to this point,” he said.
“So for me, whatever happens, I have no regrets. I know I put the work in and I just have to go out there and try [to] do the best I can.”
And although he feels confident about his chances of being named to the 2024 Olympic Team, he now knows that “in this sport, anything could happen.”
Donnell Whittenburg of United States competes during the Men's Still Rings Final at the 2022 Gymnastics World Championships on November 05, 2022 in Liverpool, England.
Just two years short of a decade ago, Whittenburg stepped up to the plate at the Olympic Trials for the very first time as he attempted to make the coveted U.S. team for Rio 2016.
When the Olympic Team was announced at the conclusion of that competition eight years ago, he was named as the traveling alternate for the Games. Recalling that moment, he told Olympics.com that he left St. Louis feeling “humbled.”
It came as a shock to the then 21-year-old, who thought that his year of performances leading up to the trials put him in a position to be a “shoo in” for the Rio team.
The year before, he took the bronze medal on vault at the World Championships, as well as silver medals on the floor, rings and vault at the Pan American Games.
“I got humbled pretty hard at that moment, so I think having that happen kind of reset my mind to be like, 'Oh, even if you were one of the best in the country…anything can happen.'”
At his second round of Olympic trials in 2021, Whittenburg received even worse news. He failed to finish in the top eight by the conclusion of the competition and did not make the Tokyo 2020 roster at all.
But, resilience and perseverance have kept Whittenburg on the international stage for an entire decade since he made his World Championships debut in 2014.
Now, over the next few days, the world will see if his Olympic dreams can finally become a reality.
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