Jordan Chiles stepped into the Tokyo Olympics – now it’s time for Paris

Jordan Chiles laughs, the beam almost as bright as the green sweatshirt she’s wearing and the Olympic ring on a chain dangling from the base of her neck. This is not necessarily a departure. Effervescent is often the default position of Chileans.

Except that there are smiles, which are presented to the public as a mask or as a form of politeness, and there are smiles. This one, which bounces off Chiles’ face for 25 minutes in a video call, is accompanied by crinkling eyes and hands moving a mile a minute and cheeks rising to her ears. This is the real artifact.

The timing of this particular burst of joy is ironic. This weekend she was scheduled to return to competition for the first time since the Pan American Games in October, but was forced to withdraw from the Winter Cup in Louisville, Kentucky, due to a shoulder injury. It’s not ideal, four months away from the U.S. Olympic Trials and five months away from the Paris Olympics, but Chiles dismisses it with a wave of her hand and promises it won’t cause her much trouble.

At 22, she is, as she aptly describes, young in the eyes of the world yet old in her isolated world of gymnastics. Her body battered and repaired, her mind treated the same way by the sport she alternately loved and loathed. But on the other hand, she has emerged as more than just a wizened athlete; she has come to her full self.

“My motto for the past two months has been ‘I am that girl,’” Chiles says. “I have nothing to prove to anyone. It’s about myself. I have nothing to prove, but I believe I have more to give.”

Chiles will be the first to admit that she doesn’t have it all figured out yet. She doesn’t want all the answers. The vagueness of the possibilities – of what her life could one day be like without gymnastics taking center stage – causes her to start riffing like a little kid on career day. How she could be anything she wanted – a nurse, an architect – or do anything she wanted. Maybe play an instrument someday. She shares her hopes to get into the real estate industry and use it to help people out of difficult circumstances; she imagines a future in which she gets married, has children and becomes a grandmother. Seconds later, she expands into a dream in which she takes a world that everyone says is broken and instead finds a way to make it better.

It’s exactly how you’d expect someone to talk as they embrace the newness of adulthood, combining simple goals and big expectations and trying to figure out exactly where she fits in. For much of her life, however, Chiles did not have the luxury of seeing such a thing as normal. Her life consisted of gymnastics.

“Gym, house, school,” she jokes. “There was only so much I could see.”

But at a certain point, what once brought her joy – tumbling and bouncing around the gym – brought her nothing but fear. Chiles calls her early relationship with the sport like being put in a black box: “Just walls, no lights.” She has previously spoken about a coach, whom she prefers not to name, who subjected her to the kind of emotional and verbal torment that young girls like Chiles once thought they had to tolerate. Belittled for not being the perfect fairy, she lost more than just her self-confidence.

“I’ve lost my voice,” she says.

She rediscovered it with the help of Simone Biles, who suggested Chiles move and train with her in Texas. That move, in 2019, saved Chiles’ career and restored her joy, but it did not take away the singularity of focus. Chiles, who had been left out of the world championship team for three years in a row, was determined to achieve her Olympic dream and put everything into that goal. The COVID-19 pandemic, which postponed the 2020 Tokyo Olympics by a year, upended her schedule, but not her intention.

“I was the underdog,” she says. “Everyone said, ‘Can she make the team?’ You can’t help but get those thoughts in your head.”

She did that by finishing third at U.S. Trials in the summer of 2021, behind Biles and Suni Lee, and essentially training to near perfection. Over a full season leading up to the Tokyo Games, she was the only gymnast to complete all her routines in the four major domestic competitions: 24-for-24.

That the mistakes came with the whole world watching seemed incredibly cruel. Chiles faltered with her beam and beam routines, failing to qualify for a single individual event final. But when Biles withdrew from the twisties, Chiles, who had planned to compete only on floor and vault in the team finals, was pressed into service in the other events.

In the team final she came through with better scores. The performance helped Team USA to a silver medal. A year later, she finally earned her spot at the world championships, helping the United States to a gold medal in Liverpool.

After that, Chiles went out and had a life for himself. She signed with a marketing company, got endorsements with Urban Outfitters and Pottery Barn Teen, worked on her clothing line, bought a house for her parents and a car for herself and, after two years of deferment, finally enrolled at UCLA. She went to class, made friends and tried to be as normal as a world-famous Olympic athlete can be on a college campus. She also played around with her routines and welcomed the shift toward team success that NCAA gymnastics allows. In 2023, she won NCAA titles in the bars and floor and finished second in the all-around.

The irony is that collegiate gymnasts compete more with each other – there are meets almost every weekend – and yet as the demands increased, Chiles made a blissful discovery. Her life didn’t have to be either/or.

“My sport and my life can be separate,” she says. “I can have fun within my sport, but also outside of it. Not everything has to be about my sport.”

Of course, that will be a much more difficult endeavor if the dangling carrot gets a spot on the Olympic team. It’s all about the sport right now, and Chiles’ revelation shouldn’t be misinterpreted as a de-emphasis on competitiveness. Once her shoulder injury is healed, she plans to approach her training with the same enthusiasm as always and set the same standard of excellence. According to Chiles, that should be clear.

“I didn’t come back to put a face on,” she says. “I came back because I have more to give.”

At various points in her career, Chiles has carried the torch as a Black woman and powerful athlete in a sport that lacked color and favored agility. She fought as an underdog to silence dissent and find her place on the U.S. team. And on gymnastics’ biggest stage, she has risen above her mistakes to deliver what her team needed.

She’s an Olympian. She is a world champion. She is a daughter, a teammate, a friend.

And she’s just getting started.

“I’m ready to face the next six months with everything I have,” she says. “And I know it’ll be great either way, because this time I’m going to do it for myself.”

At this, Jordan Chiles smiles.

Jordan Chiles competes on the balance beam during the team final at the Tokyo Olympics. Simone Biles’ withdrawal forced Chiles into additional duties. (Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)

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(Top photo from a Team USA photo shoot in November: Harry How / Getty Images)