U.S. Gymnasts’ Rerouted Road To Tokyo Begins At Winter Cup

Jade Carey reacts after her routine at the FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Championships on Oct. 12, 2019 in Stuttgart, Germany.

World-class gymnasts are used to the difficulties of pushing their physical limits to perform grueling, gravity-defying routines. 
But the mental strain wrought by not competing for a year? That’s been a new one.
Everyone has coped differently, but all are excited about the prospect of finally presenting routines before actual judges again, even in an arena with no spectators, U.S. gymnasts said during a media conference call ahead of this weekend’s Winter Cup in Indianapolis, the first elite gymnastics competition to be held on American soil since August 2019.
After a year with virtually no competitions but plenty of obstacles, Winter Cup represents a welcome chance for athletes to get out of the gym and test themselves before Olympic year competitions really ramp up. 
“It’s definitely been more mentally challenging than anything,” said Jade Carey, a member of the women’s team that took gold at the 2019 world championships in Stuttgart, Germany. “It’s just so out of the norm to not be competing. I’ve been used to just go-go-go all the time.”
Flashback a year: With the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 postponed and no domestic competitions on the horizon, the U.S.’s top gymnasts retreated into their gyms (when they were open) to hunker down, maintain their skills, and wait for things to get better. Though the wait has been long, many feel they’ve used the year to their advantage. 
“I think I’ve really improved on bars and beam, just my form and execution and being more confident,” Carey, a 20-year-old from Arizona, said. “Bars I’ve been working a lot of new skills and I’ve been really excited to hopefully compete a lot of new skills and a new connection and my new dismount.”
As part of the landscape that has been reshaped by the pandemic, Winter Cup, once exclusively a men’s competition, has expanded to include women for the first time. Things will get started with Friday’s men’s all-around final serving as the qualification to Sunday’s individual apparatus finals. The women’s competition is spread out over Saturday and Sunday.
“I’m really nervous because it’s almost been a full year since I’ve competed,” said 16-year-old Konnor McClain. “I haven’t not competed in this long since I was 4 years old.”
The chance to get back in front of the judges after such a long layoff has drawn many of the nation’s top contenders, including Carey and Sunisa Lee, who collected a hat trick of medals at the 2019 world championships, as well as 2018 world team gold medalist Riley McCusker, and 2016 Olympic gold and silver medalist Laurie Hernandez, who will be competing for the first time since the Rio Games.
What does a gymnast lose when she doesn’t compete for a long time? “I personally lost a lot of confidence in myself, and it took a long time to get back,” said Lee, who will be doing bars and beam only this weekend because of an ankle injury. “There’s a lot that goes into it mentally that other people can’t see.”
McClain, who turned 16 this month, has been one of the top juniors in the country during the past few years. Initially, she was an early contender for the Paris 2024 Games, but the Olympic postponement has meant that gymnasts born in 2005, who would not ordinarily have been eligible for the 2020 Games, now have a shot at making the Tokyo team. 
“My whole life pretty much changed after that news came out,” said McClain, who resides in West Virginia, adding that she and coach Susan Brown have been trying not to overwhelm her with too many new skills or expectations. 
“The Olympics are definitely in the back of my mind for sure,” McClain said, but so is making it to the Trials and earning a different trip to Japan, for the 2021 world championships in Kitakyushu this fall. 
“Let’s see where that takes me,” she said.
Not everyone expected to contend for the Olympic team will be present at Winter Cup. 2017 world champion Morgan Hurd has stayed home in Delaware, MyKayla Skinner is still getting back in shape after contracting the coronavirus earlier this year. 2005 world champion Chellsie Memmel is focusing on making her comeback at the American Classic a few months down the line.
Five-time U.S. men’s champion Sam Mikulak, who has won Winter Cup three times in the past five years, has opted to skip it and prepare for meets down the line. That leaves the men’s field more open, potentially for Yul Moldauer, a world bronze medalist in 2017 who has risen steadily throughout the quadrennium. 
Moldauer, whose University of Oklahoma training base was closed at points during the pandemic, initially rigged a gym setup in his garage so he could continue training. He has since returned to Colorado and his home club, 5280 Gymnastics, and arrived in Indianapolis feeling good about where he is.
“I never want to say that I’m too confident but I know that I can hit my routines,” Moldauer said. “I’m excited to compete and I’m ready to put on a show.”
2019 world team member Shane Wiskus, who juggles a schedule that includes competing for the University of Minnesota despite being based at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, now, could also be in the mix. Famous for his extraordinary one-armed catch of a tough release skill in 2019, Wiskus credits Mikulak with helping him transition to post-college gymnastics.
“Sam and I have worked together a lot on high bar, just tweaking different things,” Wiskus said. “It feels like we’re just learning off each other and I’m getting a lot of information as well.”
Paul Juda, a top-ranked NCAA gymnast for the University of Michigan, made an excellent impression as one of three U.S. men to compete at November’s Friendship and Solidarity meet in Tokyo. Like Wiskus and Moldauer, Juda’s Tokyo appearance means he’s competed internationally more recently than many of his contemporaries.
Will that give him an edge this weekend? Not necessarily, on account of the “shutdowns” and quarantines that have sporadically made him miss chunks of training. “The pandemic kind of taught me to take every turn and not take anything for granted,” Juda said. In Indianapolis, “shutdown or not, we’re here.”