Four Tokyo 2020 Olympians vie for conference championship titles in busy weekend of gymnastics

With three weekends of NCAA women’s gymnastics competition remaining in the 2022 season, it’s time to see if Olympian Sunisa Lee, Jade Carey, Jordan Chiles and Grace McCallum can add more hardware to their already long resumes.

On Saturday (19 March), the quartet will try to lead their teams to conference championships with Carey (Oregon State University), Jordan Chiles (University of California at Los Angeles) and McCallum (University of Utah) set to face one another at the Pac-12 Championships in Salt Lake City, while Lee (Auburn University) looks to help take her team to a first-ever Southeastern Conference Championship title in Birmingham, Alabama.

On the international stage, two major events are also scheduled this week with the DTB Cup in Stuttgart, Germany, and the International Gymnastics Federation’s apparatus World Cup in Cairo.

Olympians headlining competition at the DTB Cup include Germany’s Sarah Voss, Americans Yul Moldauer and Brody Malone, while in Cairo eight-time Olympian Oksana Chusovitina of Uzbekistan and Tokyo 2020 floor exercise champion Artem Dolgopyat of Israel are among the field.

Farah Ann Abdul Hadi announces her retirement

Malaysian gymnast Farah Ann Abdul Hadi announced her retirement from the sport this week.

“25 years ago, a little girl took a leap of faith and joined the crazy world of gymnastics. Entranced with being a gymnast, I embarked on a journey that would ultimately become my greatest passion,” she wrote in an Instagram post, announcing her decision. “Now after 25 amazing years in this sport, I am finally ready to say goodbye to being a competitive gymnast.”

Abdul Hadi became the third Malaysian gymnast to qualify to the Olympic Games and competed in last summer’s Tokyo 2020 Games. She finished 68th in the all-around standings during the qualifying round.

She is the winner of 12 medals at the Southeast Asian Games, including seven golds.

“It’s been a ride of a lifetime, giving everything that I have, all my love, passion and dedication,” she continued in the post. “Along the way, making my dreams and goals come true, qualifying and competing in the Olympic Games, I am so thankful to retire ON MY TERMS. It’s been amazing. Thank you to all of you.”

From the vault…

This week, we take a look back at the Chinese women on the uneven bars at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. The squad posted the highest total on the event, 49.625, behind massive scores from He Kexin (16.850) and Yang Yilin (16.800). The Chinese team went on to win the first-ever women’s Olympic team gold medal in gymnastics, holding off the United States and Russia.