Jade Carey performs her floor routine at U.S. Gymnastics Championships on August 17, 2018 in Boston.
Jade Carey has gymnastics fans seeing triple double.
Just nine days after U.S. teammate Simone Biles became the first woman to land the triple-twisting, double somersault on floor exercise at the U.S. Gymnastics Championships, Carey posted a video to her social media accounts Tuesday night showing she has been training the skill herself.
In the video, Carey charges down the floor, performs a round off into back handspring and then launches into her triple-double, landing cleanly on a soft mat placed just off the competition floor.
“Almost ready…” the caption said, with the rocket emoji at the end.
Biles, the six-time world/Olympic champion on floor exercise, stunned the gymnastics community when she successfully landed the triple-double on the final night of the national championships.
Afterward, Tom Forster, the U.S. women’s high-performance team coordinator, said the triple-double was as big of a skill as is possible on floor exercise in women’s gymnastics.
“I think she has maxed it out on floor for sure,” he said.
Carey is wasting little time in trying to match it.
The 19-year-old Carey burst on the scene two years ago after coming up through the Junior Olympic circuit, which is a step below the elite level where most national team gymnasts develop. After being spotted at a JO camp in the fall of 2016, she earned an invitation to a U.S. national team camp and then made the world championships team in 2017, where she won silver medals on vault and floor.
The Phoenix native withdrew from consideration to the 2018 world championships, however, because she is aiming to qualify for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 using a new individual format, and FIG rules said an athlete who helps his or her team qualify for the Olympics cannot also qualify individually (the U.S. women’s team earned a berth to Tokyo by merit of winning last year’s world title).
Now Carey, who has nearly locked up her individual Olympic berth, is back in contention for the 2019 world championships taking place in October in Stuttgart, Germany.
She’s coming off second-place finishes on vault and floor at the national championships, both behind Biles, while taking seventh in the all-around.
Following a national team training camp Sept. 5-8, at least eight U.S. gymnasts will take part in a selection camp Sept. 25-27 in Florida, and from there USA Gymnastics will select the five-woman team that will compete in Stuttgart.
Should they make the team, Biles or Carey could also come home with a new eponymous skill.
In the gymnastics code of points, when a gymnast is the first to perform a skill at a world championships or Olympics, that skill takes on the gymnast’s name.
Biles already has two eponymous skills, one on floor and one on vault, while the triple-double would be Carey’s first. Should both perform the skill successfully at worlds, it would take both their names.
Chrös McDougall has covered the Olympic Movement for TeamUSA.org since 2009, including the gymnastics national championships and Olympic trials since 2011, on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc. He is based in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
