NEW ORLEANS (AP) — There was a time, not that long ago really, when Joscelyn Roberson would combat the nerves that inevitably popped up before a major gymnastics meet by reminding herself of one very simple fact.
“I could be like, ‘Oh no one’s watching me,’” the 19-year-old said with a laugh. “Like they’re watching Simone (Biles). They’re watching Jordan (Chiles). They’re watching Suni (Lee) and Jade (Carey). Like, they are not watching me.”
Well, they are now.
Biles, Lee, Carey and Carey are all on sabbatical from elite gymnastics, perhaps for good. And when Roberson salutes the judges during the first night of the U.S. Gymnastics Championships on Friday, the world championship gold medalist and Olympic alternate will be one of the few athletes on the floor with experience on the sport’s biggest stage.
“Maybe they are kind of watching me (now), so it adds a different level of nerves, but I love it,” Roberson said.
Good thing, because she’ll probably have to get used to it. Not just for Roberson, but the athletes who will find the spotlight pointing their way now that the icons who commanded it so completely have stepped aside, at least for now.
A year after sending the oldest team in modern Olympic history to Paris, the average age of the competitors who will spend the weekend at Smoothie King Center taking their first tentative steps toward the 2028 Los Angeles Games is under 18.
Hezley Rivera helped the Americans capture gold last summer. Now, the 17-year-old finds herself thrust into the role as one of the standardbearers for one of the marquee programs of the U.S. Olympic movement, and the external pressure that comes along with it.
“I definitely know that people have certain expectations, but I don’t really care what people have, like, expectations-wise for me,” she said. “I know what I want and my goals, so it’s kind of just focusing on what I’m doing in the gym and what I am doing on the competition floor.”
Rivera’s elite 2025 debut was bumpy. She tied for 12th at the U.S. Classic last month, well behind WOGA club teammate Claire Pease, who showed uncommon poise in her first major competition at the senior level.
Yes, it wasn’t the meet Rivera wanted, but the reality is the year following an Olympics is all about adjusting to the sport’s updated Code of Points and plotting out what the run-up to the next Olympics might look like.
That’s perhaps even more true this time around, not just on the floor but off it. While a new wave of athletes who grew up idolizing Biles and Lee step towards the forefront, the organization they will represent is undergoing a significant change of its own.
A ‘bittersweet’ departure
Li Li Leung, who nimbly guided USA Gymnastics out of the wake of the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal, is stepping down at the end of the year. During her final “State of the Sport” address on Wednesday, Leung grew uncharacteristically emotional during what she called a “bittersweet” milestone.
Asked if she’s had any second thoughts since announcing her plan in June, Leung shook her head.
“I’ve accomplished everything that I set out to do when I took this role,” she said. “It takes quite a bit of work to build up to an Olympic Games, and it would be so unfair if I made my decision a couple of years from now and not giving the next CEO the runway to be able to build successfully into LA.”
Much of the groundwork has already been laid.
While the organization is certainly on much stronger footing — earlier this week USA Gymnastics and NBC Sports announced they were extending their partnership through 2032, and the high-profile corporate sponsors who bailed in the aftermath of Nassar have returned — Leung stressed the job she and the rest of an organization that was in tatters when she arrived in early 2019 is hardly finished.
“The transformation of USA Gymnastics and its culture is not over, it will never be over,” she said. “There is no such thing as a ‘mission accomplished’ attitude at USA Gymnastics. Instead, we will always be looking at how to build on what we have achieved.”
Hitting reset
That remains true on the floor as well. The faces that defined the U.S.’s lengthy run of dominance — Biles most of all — are taking a well-deserved break. And while the lure of performing in a hometown Games three summers from now may eventually prod some of them back, this year will be about getting a feel for the next generation.
“I really look at this as a rebuilding year and it’s a year of opportunity,” women’s program technical lead Chellsie Memmel said. “Most of our Olympians haven’t returned. And then the few we have are still very young. So it’s really about building an opportunity for the younger ones.”
And for some of the newly older ones (by gymnastics standards, anyway), too.
Skye Blakely is all of 20. Yet she’s seen her hopes of making it to the Olympics end not once but twice because of injury. The road back from the torn right Achilles she suffered on the eve of the 2024 Olympic Trials hasn’t been easy. Yet she’s at a point where she can compete safely on uneven bars and balance beam. While there was a part of her that wanted to give all four events a shot, she also understands there’s no rush.
Back when Blakely was 13, she figured she’d be done as an elite by 20. She pointed to Biles’ history-making performance last summer at 27 as proof that “old” isn’t what it used to be.
“Your end is what you make it, it’s not what everybody else says it is,” she said. “I say I might not go for another 10 years, but to be completely honest, I don’t know what these next 10 years will look like for me at all, because I didn’t even think I’d still be doing elite at 20, and here we are.”
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