Jordan Chiles smiles, a smile that’s almost as bright as the green sweatshirt she’s wearing and the Olympic rings necklace that hangs at the base of her neck. This is not necessarily a departure. Effervescence is often Chiles’ default position.
In addition to smiling, which is presented to the public as a mask or polite indulgence, there are Smile. A full 25 minutes into the video call, the photo popped out of Chiles’ face, with her eyes crinkling and hands moving a mile a minute, cheeks flying toward her ears. This is the real artifact.
The timing of this particular outburst of joy is ironic. This weekend, she was supposed to return to competition for the first time since the Pan American Games in October, but she had to withdraw from the Winter Cup in Louisville, Ky., due to a shoulder injury. That’s less than ideal, with the U.S. Olympic Trials still four months away and the Paris Games five months away, but Chiles dismissed that with a wave of her hand and promised it wouldn’t cause her much of a problem.
As she aptly describes it, at 22 she is young in the eyes of the world but ancient in her insular world of gymnastics. Her body was battered and healed, and her spirit was treated to a sport she loved and loathed in equal measure. But on the other hand, she’s become more than a wizened athlete; She has become whole.
“My motto for the past two months has been ‘I’m that girl,'” Chiles said. “I have nothing to prove to anyone. This is about myself. I have nothing to prove, but I believe I can give more.”
Chiles will be the first to admit she doesn’t have it all figured out yet. She doesn’t want all the answers. The ambiguity of possibility — what her life might be like when gymnastics was no longer the focus — left her wandering like a kid at pro day. How she could be anything she wanted—a nurse, an architect—or do anything she wanted. Maybe play an instrument one day. She shared her hopes of getting into real estate and using it to help people out of trouble; she envisioned a future where she would get married, have children, and become a grandma. Seconds later, she expands into a dream in which she takes a world that everyone sees as flawed and finds a way to make it better.
It’s exactly the way you’d expect someone to talk as she embraces the novelty of adulthood, mixing simple goals with lofty hopes, and trying to figure out exactly where she fits into it all. For most of her life, however, Chiles didn’t have the luxury of considering this normalcy. Her life was gymnastics.
“Gym, house, school,” she joked. “That’s all I can see.”
At some point, however, the very thing that once brought her joy—tumbling and bouncing around the gym—brought her pain. Chiles described her early relationship with the sport as being thrust into a black box — “just walls, no light.” She has previously spoken about a coach, whose name she chose not to reveal, who The coach subjected her to the emotional and verbal torture that young girls like Chiles once thought they had to endure. She is belittled for not being the perfect elf and loses more than just her confidence.
“I lost my voice,” she said.
She rediscovered this with the help of Simone Biles, who suggested Chiles move to Texas to train with her. The move in 2019 saved Chiles’ career and restored her happiness, but it didn’t take away the singularity of focus. Chiles, who was excluded from the World Championships lineup for three consecutive years, devoted everything he had to realizing his Olympic dream. The COVID-19 pandemic delayed the 2020 Tokyo Olympics by a year, disrupting her schedule but not changing her intentions.
“I’m a loser,” she said. “Everyone says, ‘Will she make the team?’ You can’t help but have those thoughts running through your head.”
Jordan Chiles watches with Simone Biles during the Tokyo Olympics team final. “I was the loser,” Chiles said of that Olympics. (Lawrence Griffith/Getty Images)
She did it, finishing third at the U.S. Trials in the summer of 2021, behind Biles and Suni Lee, with training that was essentially near-perfect. She was the only gymnast to complete all routines – 24 out of 24 – in the four major domestic competitions throughout the season leading up to the Tokyo Olympics.
It seems cruel that a mistake happened when the whole world was watching. Chiles performed poorly on the balance beam and barbell movements and failed to qualify for the finals of the single individual event. But when Biles withdrew due to a curve, Chiles, who had planned to compete only in the floor exercise and vault in the team finals, was forced to compete in other events.
In the team final, she won with better results. The performance ultimately helped the U.S. win the silver medal. A year later, she finally earned a spot at the world championships, helping the U.S. win gold in Liverpool.
Afterwards, Chiles went out to live his own life. She signed with a marketing agency, landed endorsements with Urban Outfitters and Pottery Barn Teen, worked on her own clothing line, bought a house for her parents and a car for herself, and after two years of putting it off, finally Entered the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She goes to class, makes friends, and tries to act normal like a world-famous Olympian would on a college campus. She also adjusted her routine to welcome NCAA gymnastics’ shift toward team success. In 2023, she won the NCAA horizontal bar and floor exercise championships, and was runner-up in the all-around.
Ironically, competition for college gymnasts has become more intense—there are competitions almost every weekend—but as demand increased, Chiles made a happy discovery. Her life doesn’t have to be either/or.
“My sport and my life can be separated,” she said. “I can have fun both inside and outside my sport. Not everything has to be about my sport.”
Of course, that goal becomes even more difficult when the dangling carrot is a spot on the Olympic team. It’s all about the sport right now, and Chiles’ epiphany shouldn’t be misconstrued as a de-emphasis on competitiveness. Once her shoulder injury healed, she returned to training with the same enthusiasm and set the same standard of excellence. That needs to be made clear, Chiles said.
“I didn’t come back to put on a face,” she said. “I came back because I had more to give.”
At various points in her career, Chiles carried the torch as a black woman and strong athlete in a sport that was devoid of color and favored lightness. She worked as an underdog to silence the dissenters and found her place on Team USA. On gymnastics’ biggest stage, she overcame her mistakes to give her team what it needed.
She is an Olympian. She is a world champion. She’s a daughter, a teammate, and a friend.
And she was just getting started.
“I’m ready to get through the next six months with everything I have,” she said. “I knew it was going to be great no matter what because this time I was going to do it for myself.”
At this point, Jordan Chiles smiled.
Jordan Chiles competes on the balance beam during the Tokyo Olympics team finals. Simone Biles’ exit forced Chiles to take on additional responsibilities. (Lawrence Griffith/Getty Images)
deeper
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(Top Team USA photos from November: Harry How/Getty Images)
