Simone Biles, Suni Lee and Shilese Jones' journeys to Paris 2024 converge ahead of U.S. trials
Three of Team USA's best gymnasts - Olympic gold medallists Simone Biles and Suni Lee and six-time worlds medallist Shilese Jones - have arrived in Minneapolis this week for the U.S. Olympic Team Trials all having faced very different, yet challenging, paths as they all dream of gold at the Olympic Games Paris 2024.
Biles, who withdrew from the women's team final and four subsequent individual finals at the Tokyo 2020 Games as she prioritised her mental health and dealt with a case of the 'twisties', has retooled her entire training approach ahead of what would be her third Olympic Games.
This time around, she's focused more on the elements outside the gym, including weekly therapy sessions and living her life to the fullest, including her marriage to Chicago Bears safety Jonathan Owens.
"All the work she's been doing outside the gym, and just being 27, married, she has other stuff going on, and I think it helps her keep a good balance," coach Cecile Landi, a 1996 Olympian for France, told media after official practice Wednesday (26 June). "You know, it's not only about gymnastics. And I think that keeps her sane."
It's paying off in her gymnastics, though, too, says Landi.
"She's calm. She laughs. She's back to her sometimes goofy self that we had missed a few times," she said of Biles' demeanor in training. "So I think this is where it shows."
Biles looked calm and confident, prepared and ready during the open practice, executing several routines on both the uneven bars and balance beam with ease.
"Whenever things get tough, she's usually gets tougher."
The three years since Lee struck Olympic all-around gold have been anything but easy.
The now 21-year-old has been dealing with a kidney-related health issue since March 2023 that ended her sophomore campaign at Auburn University early and held her out of international competition for Team USA last season. At times, making it to Lee's hometown trials in Minneapolis seemed unimaginable for Lee.
But 2024 has seen her and coach Jess Graba building slowly, but surely, in order to be her best at this moment, just one month prior to Paris' Opening Ceremony.
"Whenever things get tough, she's usually gets tougher," Graba said of his longtime pupil.
In the three-and-a-half weeks since the U.S. championships where Lee finished fourth all-around, Graba says Lee has focused mainly on adding difficulty to her uneven bars routine - her star event that has been the final piece of the puzzle.
Wednesday, Lee showed a routine with a 6.4 difficulty score, up from the 5.8 version at the nationals, after adding a toe on to layout Tkatchev (Nabieva) to full-twisting Pak salto (Bhardwaj) combination to open her set.
After brief layoff, Shilese Jones back feeling pain free
Jones' journey to the trials has been as the best American gymnast globally not named Biles since 2022.
She was the world all-around silver medallist behind Brazil's Rebeca Andrade in 2022 and third last year behind Biles and Andrade.
This season, Jones got off to a blockbuster start at the U.S. Classic, finishing second in the all-around and first on the uneven bars with a massive new routine that garnered a 15.250.
But when she got home from the competition, an old shoulder injury - a small tear in her labrum - flared to the point where she could not raise her arm above horizontal. Jones was forced to withdraw from the U.S. championships.
"We rested for another week, pretty much after nationals, and then we've slowly been building back up into routines. She's been doing her full routines," said coach Sarah Korngold. "Obviously, we don't have as many repetitions as maybe we would like, but her body's feeling good and so, we still feel like we made the right decision. We have a couple more workouts here to keep going. So that's where we're at."
In the morning practice, Jones worked through some issues on the balance beam, ending with a solid routine that included her standing Arabian and acrobatic sequence ending in a two foot layout.
On the uneven bars, the 21-year-old did not do a full routine but performed nearly all of her major elements including both catch-and-release moves and her intriciate stalder full pirouette to toe-on full pirouette sequence.