Jade Carey exclusive: “I feel the most confident I have throughout this entire cycle”
After a difficult season in 2023, no one would have blamed Jade Carey for feeling frustrated.
The 23-year-old has been one of Team USA’s best – and most consistent – gymnasts since making her senior debut in 2017. Carey has won seven medals at the World championships, including three golds, and is the reigning Olympic champion on the floor exercise.
But last year, she finished a surprising 15th at the U.S. championships in the all-around, her first time outside the top eight at the event in her career. (She didn’t compete on all four events during the 2017 season.)
“Getting the final routines together has been a little bit of a struggle for me,” she admitted to Olympics.com last season.
With Carey’s junior season as part of Oregon State University’s women’s gymnastics team having wrapped up last week at the NCAA Championships in Fort Worth, Texas, she says that up-and-down 2023 season has informed how she and her coach (and father) Brian Carey have approached this Olympic season.
“I think a big thing for me was… well, [there were] a few things: numbers and just endurance and strength,” Carey said of what she learned last year in an exclusive interview with Olympics.com. “I feel like not working as many elite routines during the season, I didn’t feel strong enough or confident enough in my elite routines… because I didn’t have that strength and endurance like I did before.
“It was really just that and me not feeling confident because I was feeling that way,” she continued. “It was definitely a big struggle, but at the end of the day, we learned a lot. It’s what really pushed me to just be even better and more on top of it this year.”
A change in plans
Coming into the 2024 collegiate season, Carey had planned to step away from her all-around duties for Oregon State.
She wanted to still compete for her team and by focusing on the uneven bars and balance beam only, Carey could still preserve her body for the upcoming elite season.
But, as the season got underway, she wanted more.
“I feel like ultimately, I really just missed it,” admitted Carey. “It was weird for me to be on the sidelines, especially for vault and floor, so just talking to the coaches and my dad and being like, ‘Okay, can I do it? But maybe do skills that I really won’t even do really in elite that are really simple so it doesn’t hurt my body in anyway.”
The coaches relented and in early February, Carey was back on all four events for nearly the rest of the season.
Carey: An elite focus
But despite the change of plans, Carey says the lessons from 2023 and a focus on Paris dramatically changed her day-to-day training during the NCAA season.
“This year, I spent a lot more time working my elite skills and routines than I have in the past. I know that there were some college meets where I got there and I was like, ‘Well, I’ve only done one of these bar routines this week,” Carey said. “I think I mentally was in this spot this year, like, ‘Okay, I know I don’t need to do five a day to go out there and compete. I’ve been doing it for two years.”
With her NCAA season complete, she faces a quick turnaround – in just under a month, she’ll compete twice. First, at next week's American Classic (27 April in Katy, Texas) and, then, at the U.S. Classic (18 May in Hartford, Connecticut).
Carey says she’s ready for it.
“I feel like I’ve put in a lot of work throughout the season to get the skills, build the endurance, put parts and routines together,” she said. “After NCAAs is over, it’s just getting right back in the gym and working even that much harder to put the routines together and clean them up for competition.
“I would say from where I want to be at [U.S.] championships, [I’m] probably like 75% there. Like, almost there, but not quite where I want to be at my peak,” Carey said later.
There might be work still to be done in the gym, but mentally, Carey is dialed in.
“I would say I feel the most confident I have throughout this entire cycle,” Carey said. “I don’t have a ton of changes, so I’ve had a lot of these skills for many years. So, it’s me just reminding myself of how many numbers I’ve done and even the meets that I’ve competed them at.
“And just reminding myself of how good I am,” she added with a laugh, “and not letting last year define that for me.”