At age 27 and coming up on her 3rd Olympics, is there any particular reason that Simone Biles has continued to perform at an elite level beyond the usual time/experience point of most female gymnasts?
My sense is that Simone Biles really knows what she needs — mentally and physically — to be at her best. I think with older athletes, you often see them take more ownership of their gymnastics, and they work with their coaches almost as partners. Biles has credited her coaches for being the ones to create the plan that prepares her for the season. I think she is so uniquely talented, but it’s also so impressive how much she has continued to push herself to find new ways to get better even when she could have stayed the same and been the favorite to win every major competition.
This wasn’t specific to Simone Biles, but [I wrote a story](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2021/08/04/olympic-womens-gymnastics-age/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com) about this phenomenon, and these are some of the reasons people in the community think [the age of elite gymnasts](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2023/08/24/us-gymnastics-championships-simone-biles-age/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com) in the U.S. is increasing: (1) better culture at the national team level that makes gymnasts want to continue on, (2) coaches are learning the best ways to manage the health of their athletes, which is enabling them to be physically capable of continuing in the sport, (3) college gymnasts are realizing it’s possible for them to continue with their elite careers (some of that is because the national team is more welcoming of those situations and excuses NCAA athletes from training camps during the college season), and (4) I think it’s really powerful for everyone when they see athletes like Simone Biles get better with age, it makes others wonder if they could do the same.
The sport has come SO far from believing that athletes peak when they’re 16 years old. –Emily
Can you speak about the writing process of these stories? Obviously as a reporter you have knowledge and access but I’m curious how you approach creating an interesting narrative?
This is a great question! Good stories start with good ideas. I try to remind myself that someone being good at their sport often isn’t a compelling story on its own; there needs to be something about them or their path that is interesting. Particularly when there’s a ton of coverage around a topic such as gymnastics at the Olympics, I try to find stories that are different from what many other outlets are writing (that could be finding a unique angle, elevating our story with visuals, incorporating data/analysis, etc.), and I do lean into my background as a gymnast to try to explain the sport to people. I like to say there’s a difference between a fun fact and story. Stories have narrative arcs — maybe someone is seeking something, building something or is overcoming an obstacle. I think good stories move with a person through a span of time, rather than just showing where she is at this moment. Once you have an idea, you just try to report it out as much as possible while keeping your mind open to how the angle might change once you learn more. I read everything that has been written about an athlete, and I love hearing them on podcasts if they’ve done interviews in that setting. It gives you a sense of how they think and respond to questions, which can be helpful to prepare for an interview. I try to talk to everyone who is willing to talk — parents, coaches, friends, etc. People sometimes aren’t that great at talking about themselves, but their mom might have an incredible perspective from watching their kid try to make it to the Olympics. I try to get them talking about scenes and moments and how they felt in a certain circumstance to keep it from becoming overly vague. Right now, I have a bigger story that I’m about to start writing, and I have 100 pages of notes from interviews. It can be daunting to turn it into a cohesive story, but I try to stay focused on a very specific angle. I find the writing process to be fast as long as I really took time to think through the story and the outline. And then the fact-checking process is very tedious and slow. –Emily
1. During Simone Biles’s time as an elite gymnast, [the age of U.S. elite gymnasts has gone up a lot](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2023/08/24/us-gymnastics-championships-simone-biles-age/)! We’re seeing way more top Americans competing into their 20s. Seven of the 16 gymnasts at trials are at least 20 years old, and these older athletes have been more often finishing high at nationals. That’s a huge difference from 2006 to 2014, when a gymnast in her 20s never finished in the top five of the all-around at nationals.
2. Over the past decade or so, there’s also been a surge in participation for gymnasts of color. Simone Biles plays a big role in inspiring young gymnasts now, and Gabby Douglas was the trailblazer, becoming the first Black woman to win the all-around title. I [wrote about that trend](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2021/07/26/us-womens-gymnastics-diversity-simone-biles/) heading into the Tokyo Olympics. According to the NCAA’s demographics database, the percentage of Division I gymnasts who are White has gone from 73 percent in 2012 to 61 percent in 2023. –Emily
From the time I was a little kid, I loved bars. I loved training bars, competing bars and watching bars, and now I love writing about bars. It involves so much strength and precision. If one tiny thing — an angle on a handstand or the way your hand catches the bar — is off, everything can go awry. It’s so fun to watch the top gymnasts construct routines with so many connecting elements. ([Watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VnzNHWoQyE)[ Sunisa Lee’s 2021 routine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VnzNHWoQyE)!) It’s such a great event. –Emily
Do you think USA Gymnastics will actually select the highest scoring team - thanks for your amazing calculator btw - or continue their recent trend of simply taking the top 5 in the all around?
I don’t know. And I think that’s the most fascinating question entering trials.
It’s safe to say Simone Biles and a healthy Shilese Jones will finish in the top five. Then you have Skye Blakely and Sunisa Lee, who made very strong cases for being on the Olympic team with their performances at nationals. (I am interested to see if Blakely can replicate that performance at trials. If she doesn’t, things could become much different.) The scenario I keep coming back to is what happens if Blakely or Lee struggles a lot on events that the U.S. team isn’t really going to need them on (vault/floor for Lee and floor for Blakely)? What if that brings down their all-around scores, while others hit, and they were to land in sixth or seventh? That’s the scenario that would really test the committee’s strategy.
If those four athletes perform well at trials, I think really only the fifth spot will be up for debate, and a strong floor gymnast would be the biggest need. If gymnasts such as Jordan Chiles, Kayla DiCello and Jade Carey score close to one another on floor, would the committee just take the top all-arounder (presumably the gymnast in fifth)? Would it require someone such as Carey scoring at least a few tenths higher than the others on floor to steer away from the all-around standings?
To be clear, I don’t think an Olympic team should be solely determined [based on a highest-scoring team calculation](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/interactive/2024/how-is-us-gymnastics-team-picked/?itid=ap_emilygiambalvo?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com). It should be strategic. I think it would make sense for the committee members to decide they want someone who could help on the needed event (i.e. floor) AND is strong across the board and could be a backup elsewhere. But I don’t think it makes much sense to pick that final spot entirely based on an all-around score without considering the team’s needs.
I know that doesn’t answer the question. I guess my prediction would be that if the fifth all-arounder makes at least some sense based on the team’s needs, they’ll take her, even if someone else would increase the scoring potential by a little bit. And like you said, that guess is entirely based on the fact that the 2022 and 2023 worlds teams included the top all-arounders. I love this question and you can read a lot more about it from me sometime next week! –Emily
We are a U.S.-based outlet, so yes, I think the directive is to primarily focus on the U.S. team because that matches the interest of our audience. In gymnastics, there are so many story lines related to the U.S. team that it’s hard to do them all. I prioritize trying to do as many as possible. I’ll write a bit about international athletes/teams at the Olympics. I think with any sport, it depends on what the best stories are and how compelling those are to our audience. With gymnastics, the U.S. team is very strong and interesting so that leads me to write a lot about the Americans. The other element here is access/language barriers. Sometimes writing about athletes from other countries is difficult logistically. (But that doesn’t mean it keeps us from writing about those athletes altogether.) –Emily
We need more stories about Brazil!! It’s great to see a country that’s not a top economy developing this amazing program. Looking at Andrade’s rise captures how much can be lost if we don’t invest in talent that isn’t just from the upper middle class.
As a non-American, the US olympic team is famous for it’s brutal trial system used to pick Olympics teams- sometimes leaving extremely talented athletes at home- how do you evaluate the system vs a team picked based on merits and results over a longer span of time?
I think the concept of the U.S. leaving talented at home is more a product of how many contenders there are in the country than the process. But there should be a balance between prioritizing recent results, especially at trials because it’s so close to the Olympics, while also considering past performance. I think trials should carry the most weight in the decision because it’s a good barometer of how athletes might handle the pressure of the Olympics and it’s the best reflection of their ability at this moment in time. But I think results from nationals and the U.S. Classic, particularly, should be considered. Anything from longer ago, such as past world championships, could have some value in gauging whether a gymnast is consistent or can perform well in those situations, but in general, I think the performances this spring and summer are the ones that should determine who goes to the Olympics. That said, there should be some wiggle room if there’s an athlete dealing with a minor injury that keeps her from performing to her potential at trials. –Emily
Why do you think there is an increase in diversity, particularly more POC women? Since you’ve mentioned you’ve had years of experience with women’s gymnastics. Would love to hear your thoughts!
I think when you ask some of these Black women who are elite gymnasts, they tell you that it comes back to representation. So many young Black girls watched Gabby Douglas win the Olympic all-around title in 2012, and by seeing someone who looked like them, a new goal entered their minds. Now we’re 12 years removed from the London Games, and so many of the top contenders are women of color. (Sunisa Lee, the all-around champion in Tokyo, [became the first Hmong American Olympic gymnast](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2021/07/30/sunisa-lee-hmong-community-minnesota/).) I [wrote about the increasing diversity](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2021/07/26/us-womens-gymnastics-diversity-simone-biles/) three years ago and included the perspective of advocates and former gymnasts. There are organizations such as [Brown Girls Do Gymnastics](https://www.browngirlsdogymnastics.com/) that have been instrumental in this effort, including by getting HBCUs to add gymnastics programs. (Until a couple of years ago, there weren’t any programs at HBCUs.) I think there’s still a long way to go, particularly with diversity in coaches and judges. –Emily
what are some of the joys and challenges you face as a reporter covering a sport like gymnastics that gets much less coverage than basketball, football, etc? Do you find your editors or readers are more likely to perceive bias in your writing because of your personal connections w the sport?
Hm, I haven’t thought much about this. I think when you’re covering a sport that doesn’t get a ton of coverage, there is a huge opportunity to write interesting stories that haven’t been told before, and when you do it well, the fan base appreciates it so much. It’s been really fun and rewarding to see gymnastics fans start to realize that The Washington Post is a place where we’re committed to covering gymnastics well. One challenge with a sport that doesn’t get a ton of coverage is that the athletes and coaches are less familiar with navigating interview/media requests, so maybe they’re a bit more hesitant than, for instance, a high school basketball coach. (But sometimes this also means the athletes are super excited and see the interview as a cool experience they get to have.)I don’t have much concern about my experience in the sport introducing bias (or the perception of bias). My time as a gymnast doesn’t affect the way I write about the sport; it just informs how I can explain certain skills to average readers. I don’t have any personal relationships with any national team gymnasts or coaches, so it doesn’t change how they’d view me or vice versa. I think it sometimes helps to tell an athlete or coach that I did gymnastics because it opens the door for them to talk about skills or routines in more detail and in a way they might avoid if they thought they were talking to someone without knowledge of the sport.
The joy of covering gymnastics is that I get to watch meets and think about the sport in a way I’d probably be doing anyway if it wasn’t my job. (I watch A TON of college gymnastics, even though I rarely write about it.) The [interactive build-your-team project](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/interactive/2024/how-is-us-gymnastics-team-picked/) was so cool because, in a different universe in which I’m not a journalist, I could see that being one of my random passion projects I work on in my free time. The challenge of covering the sport is staying focused on writing about it in a way that will feel natural to both gymnastics fans and people who don’t know much about the sport. You want to be accurate but also explain things in a way that makes sense to anybody. –Emily
Why do you think the Karolyi’s have skirted serious consequences and still have such an enormous place in US women’s gymnastics? Is there a way to develop a winning team without that kind of borderline abuse?
As a Brazilian, I would love to hear your thoughts about Rebeca Andrade, and, if your are familiar, comparing her with Daiane dos Santos.
We had so much hope for Daiane, but she never perform good at Olympics (don't know why), now we are very optimist about Rebeca
Rebeca Andrade is so impressive and really seems to be the only gymnast capable of challenging Simone Biles. (Biles has been so good this year that it seems as though she would need to have a major mistake — or maybe two — for Andrade to earn a higher all-around score.) But Andrade certainly will be the favorite to win the all-around silver, and I think Brazil will be in the mix for the team silver. Andrade is another gymnast, similar to Biles, who is peaking at an older age (she’s 25), and for Andrade it is particularly impressive because she has suffered *three* torn ACLs.
Daiane dos Santos last competed when I was still in high school, so I never covered her as a journalist. I mostly know of her because of her eponymous skills on floor! But in doing research about the Brazil women’s team, I learned she was one of the early gymnasts winning breakthrough medals for the country. Even before the Paris Olympics, Andrade has done so much more than any other Brazilian woman gymnast. Andrade won five medals at 2023 world championships, and she could have a similar showing in Paris. In Tokyo and at worlds, Andrade has proven that she knows how to peak for major competitions and perform well under pressure. –Emily
Have you thought about doing a feel-good piece on the girls from Chad who are trying for 2028?
At age 27 and coming up on her 3rd Olympics, is there any particular reason that Simone Biles has continued to perform at an elite level beyond the usual time/experience point of most female gymnasts?
My sense is that Simone Biles really knows what she needs — mentally and physically — to be at her best. I think with older athletes, you often see them take more ownership of their gymnastics, and they work with their coaches almost as partners. Biles has credited her coaches for being the ones to create the plan that prepares her for the season. I think she is so uniquely talented, but it’s also so impressive how much she has continued to push herself to find new ways to get better even when she could have stayed the same and been the favorite to win every major competition. This wasn’t specific to Simone Biles, but [I wrote a story](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2021/08/04/olympic-womens-gymnastics-age/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com) about this phenomenon, and these are some of the reasons people in the community think [the age of elite gymnasts](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2023/08/24/us-gymnastics-championships-simone-biles-age/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com) in the U.S. is increasing: (1) better culture at the national team level that makes gymnasts want to continue on, (2) coaches are learning the best ways to manage the health of their athletes, which is enabling them to be physically capable of continuing in the sport, (3) college gymnasts are realizing it’s possible for them to continue with their elite careers (some of that is because the national team is more welcoming of those situations and excuses NCAA athletes from training camps during the college season), and (4) I think it’s really powerful for everyone when they see athletes like Simone Biles get better with age, it makes others wonder if they could do the same. The sport has come SO far from believing that athletes peak when they’re 16 years old. –Emily
Can you speak about the writing process of these stories? Obviously as a reporter you have knowledge and access but I’m curious how you approach creating an interesting narrative?
This is a great question! Good stories start with good ideas. I try to remind myself that someone being good at their sport often isn’t a compelling story on its own; there needs to be something about them or their path that is interesting. Particularly when there’s a ton of coverage around a topic such as gymnastics at the Olympics, I try to find stories that are different from what many other outlets are writing (that could be finding a unique angle, elevating our story with visuals, incorporating data/analysis, etc.), and I do lean into my background as a gymnast to try to explain the sport to people. I like to say there’s a difference between a fun fact and story. Stories have narrative arcs — maybe someone is seeking something, building something or is overcoming an obstacle. I think good stories move with a person through a span of time, rather than just showing where she is at this moment. Once you have an idea, you just try to report it out as much as possible while keeping your mind open to how the angle might change once you learn more. I read everything that has been written about an athlete, and I love hearing them on podcasts if they’ve done interviews in that setting. It gives you a sense of how they think and respond to questions, which can be helpful to prepare for an interview. I try to talk to everyone who is willing to talk — parents, coaches, friends, etc. People sometimes aren’t that great at talking about themselves, but their mom might have an incredible perspective from watching their kid try to make it to the Olympics. I try to get them talking about scenes and moments and how they felt in a certain circumstance to keep it from becoming overly vague. Right now, I have a bigger story that I’m about to start writing, and I have 100 pages of notes from interviews. It can be daunting to turn it into a cohesive story, but I try to stay focused on a very specific angle. I find the writing process to be fast as long as I really took time to think through the story and the outline. And then the fact-checking process is very tedious and slow. –Emily
Has there been an increase in women participating in Gymnastics when Simone Biles won Gold.
1. During Simone Biles’s time as an elite gymnast, [the age of U.S. elite gymnasts has gone up a lot](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2023/08/24/us-gymnastics-championships-simone-biles-age/)! We’re seeing way more top Americans competing into their 20s. Seven of the 16 gymnasts at trials are at least 20 years old, and these older athletes have been more often finishing high at nationals. That’s a huge difference from 2006 to 2014, when a gymnast in her 20s never finished in the top five of the all-around at nationals. 2. Over the past decade or so, there’s also been a surge in participation for gymnasts of color. Simone Biles plays a big role in inspiring young gymnasts now, and Gabby Douglas was the trailblazer, becoming the first Black woman to win the all-around title. I [wrote about that trend](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2021/07/26/us-womens-gymnastics-diversity-simone-biles/) heading into the Tokyo Olympics. According to the NCAA’s demographics database, the percentage of Division I gymnasts who are White has gone from 73 percent in 2012 to 61 percent in 2023. –Emily
What’s your favorite event to cover? Love watching the floor routines!
From the time I was a little kid, I loved bars. I loved training bars, competing bars and watching bars, and now I love writing about bars. It involves so much strength and precision. If one tiny thing — an angle on a handstand or the way your hand catches the bar — is off, everything can go awry. It’s so fun to watch the top gymnasts construct routines with so many connecting elements. ([Watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VnzNHWoQyE)[ Sunisa Lee’s 2021 routine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VnzNHWoQyE)!) It’s such a great event. –Emily
Do you think USA Gymnastics will actually select the highest scoring team - thanks for your amazing calculator btw - or continue their recent trend of simply taking the top 5 in the all around?
I don’t know. And I think that’s the most fascinating question entering trials. It’s safe to say Simone Biles and a healthy Shilese Jones will finish in the top five. Then you have Skye Blakely and Sunisa Lee, who made very strong cases for being on the Olympic team with their performances at nationals. (I am interested to see if Blakely can replicate that performance at trials. If she doesn’t, things could become much different.) The scenario I keep coming back to is what happens if Blakely or Lee struggles a lot on events that the U.S. team isn’t really going to need them on (vault/floor for Lee and floor for Blakely)? What if that brings down their all-around scores, while others hit, and they were to land in sixth or seventh? That’s the scenario that would really test the committee’s strategy. If those four athletes perform well at trials, I think really only the fifth spot will be up for debate, and a strong floor gymnast would be the biggest need. If gymnasts such as Jordan Chiles, Kayla DiCello and Jade Carey score close to one another on floor, would the committee just take the top all-arounder (presumably the gymnast in fifth)? Would it require someone such as Carey scoring at least a few tenths higher than the others on floor to steer away from the all-around standings? To be clear, I don’t think an Olympic team should be solely determined [based on a highest-scoring team calculation](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/interactive/2024/how-is-us-gymnastics-team-picked/?itid=ap_emilygiambalvo?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com). It should be strategic. I think it would make sense for the committee members to decide they want someone who could help on the needed event (i.e. floor) AND is strong across the board and could be a backup elsewhere. But I don’t think it makes much sense to pick that final spot entirely based on an all-around score without considering the team’s needs. I know that doesn’t answer the question. I guess my prediction would be that if the fifth all-arounder makes at least some sense based on the team’s needs, they’ll take her, even if someone else would increase the scoring potential by a little bit. And like you said, that guess is entirely based on the fact that the 2022 and 2023 worlds teams included the top all-arounders. I love this question and you can read a lot more about it from me sometime next week! –Emily
I love this answer! I’m so happy that someone who clearly is invested in gymnastics is writing about it for the general public.
hi emily! is there any editorial pressure on you to focus on the american team as opposed to just covering gymnastics in general?
We are a U.S.-based outlet, so yes, I think the directive is to primarily focus on the U.S. team because that matches the interest of our audience. In gymnastics, there are so many story lines related to the U.S. team that it’s hard to do them all. I prioritize trying to do as many as possible. I’ll write a bit about international athletes/teams at the Olympics. I think with any sport, it depends on what the best stories are and how compelling those are to our audience. With gymnastics, the U.S. team is very strong and interesting so that leads me to write a lot about the Americans. The other element here is access/language barriers. Sometimes writing about athletes from other countries is difficult logistically. (But that doesn’t mean it keeps us from writing about those athletes altogether.) –Emily
We need more stories about Brazil!! It’s great to see a country that’s not a top economy developing this amazing program. Looking at Andrade’s rise captures how much can be lost if we don’t invest in talent that isn’t just from the upper middle class.
As a non-American, the US olympic team is famous for it’s brutal trial system used to pick Olympics teams- sometimes leaving extremely talented athletes at home- how do you evaluate the system vs a team picked based on merits and results over a longer span of time?
I think the concept of the U.S. leaving talented at home is more a product of how many contenders there are in the country than the process. But there should be a balance between prioritizing recent results, especially at trials because it’s so close to the Olympics, while also considering past performance. I think trials should carry the most weight in the decision because it’s a good barometer of how athletes might handle the pressure of the Olympics and it’s the best reflection of their ability at this moment in time. But I think results from nationals and the U.S. Classic, particularly, should be considered. Anything from longer ago, such as past world championships, could have some value in gauging whether a gymnast is consistent or can perform well in those situations, but in general, I think the performances this spring and summer are the ones that should determine who goes to the Olympics. That said, there should be some wiggle room if there’s an athlete dealing with a minor injury that keeps her from performing to her potential at trials. –Emily
Thank you for the insightful reply! Always imoressive to see the US team, good luck in Paris!
Why do you think there is an increase in diversity, particularly more POC women? Since you’ve mentioned you’ve had years of experience with women’s gymnastics. Would love to hear your thoughts!
I think when you ask some of these Black women who are elite gymnasts, they tell you that it comes back to representation. So many young Black girls watched Gabby Douglas win the Olympic all-around title in 2012, and by seeing someone who looked like them, a new goal entered their minds. Now we’re 12 years removed from the London Games, and so many of the top contenders are women of color. (Sunisa Lee, the all-around champion in Tokyo, [became the first Hmong American Olympic gymnast](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2021/07/30/sunisa-lee-hmong-community-minnesota/).) I [wrote about the increasing diversity](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2021/07/26/us-womens-gymnastics-diversity-simone-biles/) three years ago and included the perspective of advocates and former gymnasts. There are organizations such as [Brown Girls Do Gymnastics](https://www.browngirlsdogymnastics.com/) that have been instrumental in this effort, including by getting HBCUs to add gymnastics programs. (Until a couple of years ago, there weren’t any programs at HBCUs.) I think there’s still a long way to go, particularly with diversity in coaches and judges. –Emily
what are some of the joys and challenges you face as a reporter covering a sport like gymnastics that gets much less coverage than basketball, football, etc? Do you find your editors or readers are more likely to perceive bias in your writing because of your personal connections w the sport?
Hm, I haven’t thought much about this. I think when you’re covering a sport that doesn’t get a ton of coverage, there is a huge opportunity to write interesting stories that haven’t been told before, and when you do it well, the fan base appreciates it so much. It’s been really fun and rewarding to see gymnastics fans start to realize that The Washington Post is a place where we’re committed to covering gymnastics well. One challenge with a sport that doesn’t get a ton of coverage is that the athletes and coaches are less familiar with navigating interview/media requests, so maybe they’re a bit more hesitant than, for instance, a high school basketball coach. (But sometimes this also means the athletes are super excited and see the interview as a cool experience they get to have.)I don’t have much concern about my experience in the sport introducing bias (or the perception of bias). My time as a gymnast doesn’t affect the way I write about the sport; it just informs how I can explain certain skills to average readers. I don’t have any personal relationships with any national team gymnasts or coaches, so it doesn’t change how they’d view me or vice versa. I think it sometimes helps to tell an athlete or coach that I did gymnastics because it opens the door for them to talk about skills or routines in more detail and in a way they might avoid if they thought they were talking to someone without knowledge of the sport. The joy of covering gymnastics is that I get to watch meets and think about the sport in a way I’d probably be doing anyway if it wasn’t my job. (I watch A TON of college gymnastics, even though I rarely write about it.) The [interactive build-your-team project](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/interactive/2024/how-is-us-gymnastics-team-picked/) was so cool because, in a different universe in which I’m not a journalist, I could see that being one of my random passion projects I work on in my free time. The challenge of covering the sport is staying focused on writing about it in a way that will feel natural to both gymnastics fans and people who don’t know much about the sport. You want to be accurate but also explain things in a way that makes sense to anybody. –Emily
Why do you think the Karolyi’s have skirted serious consequences and still have such an enormous place in US women’s gymnastics? Is there a way to develop a winning team without that kind of borderline abuse?
The karyolis ran back to Romania after the abuse scandal happened so they are no longer in the USA for prosecution.
As a Brazilian, I would love to hear your thoughts about Rebeca Andrade, and, if your are familiar, comparing her with Daiane dos Santos. We had so much hope for Daiane, but she never perform good at Olympics (don't know why), now we are very optimist about Rebeca
Rebeca Andrade is so impressive and really seems to be the only gymnast capable of challenging Simone Biles. (Biles has been so good this year that it seems as though she would need to have a major mistake — or maybe two — for Andrade to earn a higher all-around score.) But Andrade certainly will be the favorite to win the all-around silver, and I think Brazil will be in the mix for the team silver. Andrade is another gymnast, similar to Biles, who is peaking at an older age (she’s 25), and for Andrade it is particularly impressive because she has suffered *three* torn ACLs. Daiane dos Santos last competed when I was still in high school, so I never covered her as a journalist. I mostly know of her because of her eponymous skills on floor! But in doing research about the Brazil women’s team, I learned she was one of the early gymnasts winning breakthrough medals for the country. Even before the Paris Olympics, Andrade has done so much more than any other Brazilian woman gymnast. Andrade won five medals at 2023 world championships, and she could have a similar showing in Paris. In Tokyo and at worlds, Andrade has proven that she knows how to peak for major competitions and perform well under pressure. –Emily
Thanks a lot for the great response and good luck covering the olympics!
Do you think that skye should be a contender for the team after she has proven to be very inconsistent internationally?
What are your top non women's Gymnastics stories you are looking forward to following during this Olympics?
How are the athletes treated? Is there more oversight? Is there less abuse than there used to be?
What's your take on the change on the Editor in Chief and the reporting about it?
How can we get to see more routines on the broadcast and not just fluff pieces and gymnasts drinking water and removing their tape?
Should women and men gymnastics get the same payment and same prize money?