Editor’s note: A version of this post was originally published before the 2025 U.S. Gymnastics Championships.
There was a time in the summer of 2024 when Skye Blakely, toting crutches after surgery, reflected with her parents about how well she competed at the U.S. Gymnastics Championships a month or two earlier.
Blakely finished runner-up to Simone Biles at those nationals, confirming she was a bona fide contender for the five-woman Paris Olympic team.
Three weeks later, Blakely ruptured her right Achilles’ tendon while training on floor exercise, two days before the Olympic Trials. She underwent season-ending surgery.
“Just talking about the feeling of how I competed at (2024 U.S.) Championships — I was very free, I was very relaxed, and I was having fun,” Blakely recalled. “That was a newer kind of feeling for me. I don’t always compete like that.
“They (mom Stephanie and dad Steven) were just like, ‘You see how well you did, and you’re still talking about how (much) more you have to give. Allow that to drive you for this next Olympics.'”
At this week’s Xfinity U.S. Gymnastics Championships, Blakely plans to compete on all four apparatus at an elite meet for the first time since the Achilles injury.
The nation’s top gymnasts compete in Phoenix, live on NBC Sports and Peacock.
In 2025, Blakely returned to elite competition for the first time in 14 months at the U.S. Championships. She placed first on uneven bars and second on balance beam, while skipping floor exercise and vault.
“It has been a very measured return that’s been slow and mindful of my body,” Blakely said last week. “So for it to all come together and for it to be next week that I get to fully return back to doing what I love at the level that I love, I’m just really excited and proud of the journey that I’ve been on.”
Blakely’s senior career — she is 21 years old, coming off her sophomore year at Florida — was previously defined by perseverance.
At the Tokyo Olympic Trials, she tore an elbow ligament warming up for vault, her first event. Blakely underwent Tommy John surgery, then came back to earn places on world championship-winning U.S. teams in 2022 and 2023.
In 2024, Blakely could have been the first-timer on an Olympic team otherwise full of veterans (Biles, Suni Lee, Jade Carey, Jordan Chiles).
Instead, she could be the experienced rookie in 2028.
A day after the 2024 Achilles tear, she posted, “I’m devastated and heartbroken but I believe everything happens for a reason. I was so close to reaching my dream but this injury was unavoidable. I had an amazing season that I am extremely grateful for. the plans we have for ourselves aren’t always the plans God has for us. I’m going to keep my chin high and be proud of the statement I have made for myself these past couple years. I’ll be back.”
Blakely, a Texan who started gymnastics at age 3, matriculated at Florida later in summer 2024. She told coaches with determination that she planned to make it through physical rehab and be available for the first meet of the NCAA season in January 2025.
“There were some people who were like, ‘I don’t think you will compete. We’re not sure if you will or be ready,'” she said. “I was like, ‘I’m going to be ready.'”
On Jan. 10, 2025, Blakely mounted the bars minutes after older sister Sloane did in front of about 6,000 people at the O’Connell Center. She scored 9.725 in Florida’s season-opening meet.
Blakely’s original plan was to make the 2024 Olympics and move on from elite gymnastics. But as she saw others go to college and then return to elite successfully — like Lee, Carey and Chiles — Blakely revised her thinking.
“Right after I got hurt, I was like, I’m going for 2028,” she said.
Blakely began to feel like her old self in June 2025. Through physical therapy, she had overcome weakness in her calf and discomfort in her heel after the NCAA season, which her surgeon had told her to expect.
In the 2026 season, she helped Florida to a third-place finish at the NCAA Championships, plus shared runner-up on bars. Then she won bars and beam at the U.S. Classic on July 19, a tune-up meet for the U.S. Championships.
Blakely has competed on floor and vault for Florida. But this week will be the first time she performs on those two events — where she sustained the injuries before trials in 2021 and 2024 — on the elite (and often more difficult) level since the 2024 trials.
“It’d be special to come back and to be able to take (all-around) gold home,” she said. “But my biggest goal this weekend isn’t to win. It’s just to be back and see the fun and the excitement in that alone, just the ability to come back from such a big injury and compete at that high level again. So I feel like that in itself is already a milestone and something that’s going to make me super excited.”
Come 2028, she can become the first U.S. female gymnast to make her first Olympic team off qualifying for her third Olympic Trials since Kelly Garrison in 1988.
“That kept me motivated, knowing how close I was to making the team, knowing how ready I was,” Blakely said last year. “The injury keeping me back from making that team just motivates me more.”
Jade Carey hopes to compete at a third — and final — Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028.
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