Konnor McClain: “My number one goal is still the Olympics.”

2022 U.S. gymnastics all-around champion Konnor McClain hasn’t had an easy time since becoming national champion two seasons ago.

After taking the title, back and hand injuries kept her out of the 2022 World Championships and subsequently the 2023 elite season.

Following those setbacks and two gym moves, the 18-year-old decided to head to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, joining the Louisiana State University women’s gymnastics team.

“Just with my back surgery and my hand surgery and just injury after injury, like, I couldn’t kind of get back into the groove of gymnastics, I was just like, I need something else. I need a team to support me and just to be happier and love gymnastics again,” Konnor said in an LSU press conference this week. “I knew Aleah [Finnegan]. She was like, ‘This is what you need.’”

McClain says the decision has paid off – and that she’s still targeting Paris 2024.

“I feel like it’s exactly what I needed. I feel like I made the right decision in the moment I needed it,” she explained. “This is everything I needed to still try for the Olympics and still get to that part of my life.

“My number one goal is still the Olympics,” she added later. “To make that team… I’m still training some skills, so I gotta get back in that elite groove and elite skills and everything.”

McClain has already found success in collegiate gymnastics, scoring a perfect 10 on the uneven bars Saturday (13 January) in just her second NCAA competition ever.

Simone Biles nominated for People’s Choice Awards

Seven-time Olympic medallist Simone Biles is nominated for the People’s Choice Awards’ Athlete of the Year after a stellar 2023 season.

Last year, Biles returned to competition after a nearly two-year hiatus following the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games where she won team silver and balance beam bronze.

It looked as if no time had passed as the gymnastics superstar returned to the U.S. Classic in early August with a win. She followed up that performance with a historic eighth U.S. all-around crown.

“I didn’t know if I was ever going to be able to compete again because there were multiple times this year where I was in the gym and I was like, ‘I’m actually terrified of this full-in, like I’m not doing it again, never going to do it,'" Biles told Olympics.com in an exclusive interview last year. "And then I was like, ‘You know what? I’m just going to come back another day, another day.’”

Biles wrapped up her 2023 with five medals including four golds at the World Championships in Antwerp. Her haul there included a record sixth World all-around title.

The 26-year-old has previously won a People’s Choice award in 2019 as the Gamechanger of the Year.

She is nominated alongside fellow sporting greats Coco Gauff, Giannis Antetokounmpo, LeBron James, Lionel Messi, Sabrina Ionescu, Stephen Curry and Travis Kelce.

Fans can vote through midnight Eastern U.S. title on Friday (19 January).

From the vault…

This week, we take a look back at Team Bulgaria on the uneven bars during the optional round at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, Republic of Korea. The squad was led by Diana Dudeva’s 9.850 score in the rotation, as the finished fifth overall.