Shilese Jones withdraws from U.S. gymnastics trials with injury (2024)

Then, during the final rotation of warmups before the Olympic trials Friday night, she landed a vault awkwardly — and all of the optimism about her spot in Paris vanished.

Jones needed to be helped out of the arena to receive medical attention, yet not long after she managed to perform a strong routine on bars with her left knee wrapped. Her injury has not been disclosed, and she skipped the other three events. USA Gymnastics announced Saturday that Jones will not participate in the final day of trials competition Sunday, after which the Olympic team will be named. Her inability to compete casts further doubt on her Olympic hopes.

These trials have been a reminder of just how quickly Olympic dreams can evaporate. Skye Blakely, a favorite to make the team, tore her right Achilles’ tendon two days before the women’s competition began, and Kayla DiCello also suffered an Achilles’ injury on vault Friday night, when she was the first athlete to compete. Both athletes were unable to continue. Jones clung to her chance by competing on bars before her hopes slipped further away Saturday, when she withdrew.

Theoretically, Jones could be named to the Olympic team via the vague discretionary criteria. According to the selection procedures, gymnasts cannot submit petitions for spots on the Olympic team because of injuries, but they also do not require athletes to compete on each apparatus at the trials. Still, it’s unlikely that one routine would be enough. Jones and her coach, Sarah Korngold, were not available for interviews after Friday’s competition.

Jones already had been navigating a nagging shoulder injury that flared up last month, forcing her to withdraw from the national championships. The small tear in her labrum has been an ongoing issue that is usually manageable. But suddenly, just after an excellent performance at the U.S. Classic, Jones said she could hardly raise her arm.

Jones, her coach and the U.S. high performance staff agreed the safe option was for Jones to skip nationals and try to heal in time for the trials. The Olympic team selection procedures include a petition process that allows athletes to earn spots at the trials without competing at nationals; that’s how Jones advanced here.

“In her heart of hearts, she would want to go,” Korngold said earlier in the week of Jones’s decision to withdraw from nationals. “She wants to compete. She wants to show people that she’s earning this and that she isn’t trying to skate through.”

After nationals, Jones rested for about a week and then slowly worked back to practicing her full routines. She hadn’t performed as many repetitions in training as she and Korngold would have hoped, but they had optimism entering the trials. Korngold insisted Jones’s shoulder pain has subsided. Endurance was all she was lacking.

The trials were poised to be a critical test of Jones’s readiness. Instead, another issue emerged.

Even though Jones performed only on bars during Friday’s competition, she scored a 14.675, higher than anyone else on the apparatus. If only Friday’s scores are considered, Jones would still be part of the five-gymnast combination that would maximize the U.S. team’s total. But with Jones not healthy enough to compete Sunday, the selection committee almost certainly will need to find other gymnasts to fill the void.

If Jones could have executed routines anywhere close to her potential on another apparatus or two Sunday, her outlook for Paris would have improved significantly. When healthy, she has routines on each apparatus that are strong enough for a team final. At last fall’s world championships, she contributed on all four events in the team final, and she advanced to the individual apparatus finals for bars, beam and floor. She had been consistently excellent since 2022.

The selection committee members could consider all of Jones’s success, but the trials carry the most weight. The team is chosen based on current ability — not on which athletes committee members think will be the strongest in a month. And in these final moments, Jones couldn’t go on.

“We always kind of have to look at what’s being done right now in front of us because that’s what we can actually bank on,” said Alicia Sacramone Quinn, the strategic lead of the high performance staff and a member of the selection committee.

Injuries derailed Jones’s final sprint to the Olympics, and her withdrawal from the trials was a cruel close to a weekend that was expected to end with her celebrating with the other Paris-bound Olympians.