PHOENIX (AP) — Jade Carey doesn't need to be at the U.S. gymnastics championships. At least, not like this.
That's part of what makes it all so sweet.
The 26-year-old knows she could have walked away following her final season at Oregon State in the spring of 2025, with a resume stuffed with Olympic and world championship medals
and her place in the history of the storied U.S. women's program secure.She tried, kind of. The athlete who had been going
nonstop for the better part of 20 years gave her body a bit of a break after her NCAA career ended. It lasted a handful of weeks.
Then one day, she popped into the gym and, in the words of her father and longtime coach Brian, “started playing again.”
Emphasis on “playing.”
If there's anything the two-time Olympic gold medalist has learned, it's that taking this too seriously can quickly rob you of the joy that brought you to it in the first place.
Asked if she feels the weight of living up to the standard she's set for herself as the Phoenix native prepares to salute the judges at the national championships for a seventh time when the women's competition begins at Mortgage Matchup Center, Carey shrugs.
“I just feel like right now I have one more opportunity to just have fun with it,” she said. “No expectations, no pressure."
Maturing means understanding who she was in 2021 is not who she is in 2026. There have been times she'll randomly come across a video of her gold medal-winning floor exercise routine at the Tokyo Olympics five years ago and think “that was pretty hard.”
Whether she can get back to that level as she makes a bid for a third trip to the Olympics is anyone's guess, Carey's included. Her body has held up remarkably well through the years, thanks in large part to the pragmatic approach she and Brian Carey have taken toward her training.
“I don’t know if that’s coming back,” she said. “But you never know. And I feel like training, getting back into it this year, was really hard. But I’ve kind of hit my stride, and it’s getting a little easier and feeling a little more familiar.”
Carey finished second in the all-around to 17-year-old Reese Esponda at the U.S. Classic a few weeks ago in her first elite competition since leaving the 2024 Paris Games with a pair of Olympic medals. She did it with routines that are designed to serve as a foundation as she methodically builds toward the summer of 2028.
The plan is to add difficulty as she goes along, but only when she's ready. In her mid-20s, Carey is not the same gymnast who took a circuitous path to the Tokyo Olympics that ended with the floor routine of a lifetime and the most precious of medals around her neck.
The amount of time she spends in the gym on a given day depends on how she's feeling. She and her father have an understanding that as long as she hits her numbers — meaning, how many times she works on an assignment — it doesn't matter how long she's there.
Some days she can knock it out in three hours. Some days, it's more like eight. On the days she's not feeling it at all, they'll work on a plan that spreads the workload out over a longer period of time, though that remains a rarity.
“Normally, it’s like she’s so fine-tuned with her skill, she just gets up and knocks it out,” Brian Carey said.
That's kind of what she does. What's perhaps the most remarkable thing about Carey's career is the way she simply keeps going. While some of her Olympic teammates have opted to take time off and recover after a triumphant performance — Tokyo Olympic champion Suni Lee announced last month she is preparing for a return after a two-year hiatus — Carey largely has not.
Her father credits an internal “fire” that doesn't need much to be stoked. He ordered her to take a vacation after her senior year at Oregon State. It lasted a month. There was never any formal discussion about pushing toward the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. It just sort of happened.
That doesn't mean slipping back into her routine was easy.
“I could tell my body was like, ‘What are you doing? You haven’t gone upside down in a while, like we don’t do this anymore,’” she said with a laugh. “But I’m like, ‘No, we’re going to, trust me.’”
She's well aware some of the skills she once mastered may never come back, so she'll need to evolve. That could mean opting for slightly easier (at least by gymnastics standards) elements and combinations, hoping to make up for in execution what she might lack in difficulty.
Brian Carey's job is to make sure she isn't in a rush to find out. Sometimes he still has to tell his daughter to “pump the brakes a little bit." There are days when Carey feels she's ahead of schedule. That doesn't mean the schedule is going to be adjusted. The short-term goal is to build toward earning a spot on the world championship team in October.
Yes, she understands the prospect of competing in a home Olympics is out there in the ether. And sure, it played a factor in her decision to give it a shot. The reality is, she probably would be here anyway, no matter if the Olympics were in Los Angeles or London or somebody's backyard.
The fire inside continues to burn brightly. She learned to respect it long ago. She has the rest of her life to not do gymnastics. Why douse the flames before she's ready?
“I’ve done so much that I just, I don’t know,” she said. "I just want to do this round again for fun and see how far I can push myself.”
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