After reset, Jade Carey feeling ready for 2023 U.S. Championships
The Tokyo 2020 Olympic floor exercise champion on her preparation for nationals, her evolution in the sport since 2017, and Paris 2024 dreams
Artistic Gymnastics
Sometimes even Olympic gold medallists need a reset.
That’s what Tokyo 2020 Olympic floor exercise champion Jade Carey has focused on ahead of this week’s 2023 U.S. Gymnastics Championships, set to begin on Thursday (24 August).
“I think the past month or so has been pretty challenging for me,” admitted Carey in an exclusive interview with Olympics.com on 11 August 2023. “I was to the point where I had all my skills and everything was going great, but getting the final routines together has been a little bit of a struggle for me.
“But after this week,” she continued, “I’m feeling a lot better about it.”
Carey says one skill in particular – her Maloney half on the uneven bars – was giving her trouble in training ahead of the U.S. Classic (5 August) where she performed only on the balance beam.
“I was changing the way I was doing it, rushing a little bit,” explained Carey. “So, we really, after Classics, took two days to just figure it out by itself, what I need to think in my head. Ever since then, I’ve been okay and making my routines.”
The step back has given the rising junior at Oregon State University fresh perspective ahead of nationals.
“I think I’ve been putting a lot of pressure on myself to be able to just do it and missed that step of taking it back, really figuring out what I need to think and what I need to do, more relying on my technique than just getting frustrated,” said Carey.
At the U.S. Championships, the reigning world vault champion expects to compete in the all-around and says she plans to upgrade her floor routine prior to September’s World Championships selection event.
“I’m gonna do a little bit of an easier routine for [U.S.] Championships [on floor],” Carey said. “But, then, hopefully upgrade it a bit for World Selection camp.”
Jade Carey: An evolution
Carey has been on the international gymnastics scene since 2017.
She was, somewhat famously, not focused on elite gymnastics until she was spotted by USA Gymnastics staff at the Junior Olympic Championships in May of that year.
Five months later, Carey found herself at the World Championships where she won vault and floor exercise silver medals.
“Oh, my gosh,” Carey says when asked about her 2017 whirlwind. “I feel like in 2017, I didn’t even know what I was doing! My first assignment was worlds, and it was so crazy and so exciting because it was never really anything I thought about kind of until it happened.”
Carey says her first, unexpected few years on the national team gave her the freedom to explore the process.
“Those first like three of four years were just really excited and just to see how far I can go because this wasn’t something that was really in my plan,” she said.
Six years after her international debut, Carey is a veteran of the U.S. squad, having competed at the 2017, 2019, and 2022 Worlds and the Tokyo 2020 Games held in 2021.
“Now, having gone through it before, I feel like I am more prepared mentally because I know I’ve been through it all,” Carey said. “I know exactly how it’s going to go and what I need to be prepared for.”
Even if that preparation isn’t as easy as it once was.
“I feel like as I’ve gotten older, it’s been a little harder to prepare as quick as maybe I’m used to. That’s been something challenging for me just because I get frustrated that I’m not just back to where I was in a snap of a finger,” Carey admitted. “So, that’s been challenging, but just learning to accept that and it’s going to take a little bit longer and that that’s okay as long as I get to where I want to be in the end.”
A redo in Paris for the American
Carey is, of course, hoping to end up at next year’s Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
“Since going to the Olympics was really never something that I thought I was going to do and to have made it the first time and now being motivated to want to make it back and prove to myself that I can do it again and prove it to everybody else, too, I think that would just be really special,” said Carey.
She says she has dual motivation in seeking a return trip to the Games: first, Carey wants to show the world she’s more than the floor and vault specialist she began her international career as, and second, she’d like to erase the memory of a mistake during the vault final in Tokyo.
That memory – the moment when Carey misstepped on her approach toward the vault – devastated her at the time. With hindsight and the passage of two years, Carey thinks about that moment with the context of knowing she shook it off, dusted herself down, and won the floor exercise gold medal the next day.
“I still think of it often,” said Carey. “If I’m having a bad day, I try to use it to motivate myself, like you’ve had a bad day before and you can come back from it. I think just going through that has really made me mentally stronger because I know that even if something doesn’t go as planned or expected, it doesn’t mean it’s all over, that you will live to see another day and keep fighting toward your dreams.”