So if someone could give her after that she here“Oh man, you look at me like, are you crazy, seriously?” a tearful Finnegan said at the Olympic gymnastics venue in Paris.
After Finnegan began competing at Louisiana State University as the next step in her career, officials with the Philippine Gymnastics Association reached out to her mother and an opportunity emerged: Finnegan could represent her mother's country. She decided to return to elite gymnastics and qualified for the Paris Games, a once-unthinkable feat.
Finnegan will compete for the Philippines on Sunday alongside Emma Malabuyo and Levi Yung Ruivivar, two Filipino-Americans and former U.S. national team athletes who have followed similar paths. They hope their performance will help grow gymnastics in the country. They will be the first to represent the Philippines in women's artistic gymnastics at the Olympics since 1964.
Before the women's gymnastics competition began, Finnegan stood in an interview area resembling a loading dock. She had just practiced in an empty auditorium, but the bright lights and the Philippine flag flying over the stadium made the magnitude of the competition and the importance of the moment clear.
“It's finally starting to sink in and I'm overwhelmed with emotion,” Finnegan said, with the same tears in her eyes she had when she qualified for the Olympics at the world championships in Belgium last fall. “The Olympics is very near and dear to my heart. I'm just going to cherish every moment and try to do my best to represent the Philippines.”
The Filipino-American gymnasts qualified for the Olympics in different ways over the past year, and although they compete as individuals and not as a team, they have known each other for years and have been through the Olympics together.
They baked baguettes with the Irish rugby team at a bread-baking class in the Olympic Village. They recorded TikToks and exchanged pin badges. Finnegan was by Jon-Louis-Viver's side while he underwent emergency medical treatment last week after a severe allergic reaction. (Jon-Louis-Viver posted a video on social media describing the incident as “an Olympic experience like no other” and said he was OK.) They had coffee with friends from the U.S. team and floated down the Seine River in the rain, waving Philippine flags during the opening ceremony. And everywhere they went, the Olympic rings were there, a constant reminder of the peak they'd reached.
“They are very good at branding,” said Yoon Ruivivar, who had just finished training in an arena covered in Paris 2024 logos.
Malabuyo was the closest the U.S. program came to this stage, placing fourth at the 2021 U.S. Championships and then ninth at the Olympic Trials. She headed to Tokyo as an alternate, an experience marred by pandemic-related protocols, enhanced when one of the U.S. alternates contracted the coronavirus. Jung-Ruybiver, who was ineligible to compete due to age restrictions for the Tokyo Olympics, competed in several U.S. national championships, including last year, but never finished higher than 14th in the individual all-around.
All three reached the highest level of U.S. gymnastics — a level where only a few dozen people compete at any one time — but it wasn't enough to earn them a competitive spot on the U.S. team at world championships or the Olympics.
When Finnegan and Maravillo enrolled in college in 2021, they didn't think they'd ever compete at the highest level again. When the Philippine federation reached out to Finnegan's mother about the opportunity, “I still wasn't sure if it was a door I wanted to open,” she said. But a few months later, she was competing in the Southeast Asian Games. Finnegan took the easiest path to Olympic qualification: She qualified by competing in the 2023 World Championships and placing 32nd overall in the qualifying round.
Last year, the federation reached out to Malabuyo, whose parents are Filipino, saying she was happy with what she'd achieved as an elite U.S. athlete, but with the Philippines fielding a team for the Asian championships, she thought she could contribute on the balance beam and floor exercise.
“She was in a really good place in terms of loving the sport again and having fun,” said Janelle McDonald, Malabuyo's coach at UCLA. As a sophomore in 2023, Malabuyo rediscovered her “joy for gymnastics” and “remembered what it felt like to have big goals and really pursue them,” McDonald said.
Malabuyo met with UCLA's coaches last fall and came up with a plan: stay with the collegiate team and pursue your Olympic dreams through the World Cup series. But the next few months were extremely complicated, as Malabuyo played in a few NCAA tournaments early in the season, then toured Egypt and Germany, returned to compete at Stanford University and headed to Azerbaijan a week later.
Going into the final World Cup meet in Qatar, Malabuyo had a chance to qualify for the Olympics. Her ranking points, calculated based on her placements in those meets, meant she needed to finish in the top two among her competitors. She was in a strong position on floor exercise.
Yun Ruivivar, who saw Finnegan and Maravillo and realized she could potentially represent the Philippines, also competed in this series of competitions. Since she has not yet enrolled in college, her schedule is not that complicated, and she was given the opportunity to compete on bars in the final competition in April.
Jung Ruivivar won the position. Malabuyo did not.
Malabuyo's frustration kept her up all night, and when she returned to UCLA, she sat on the floor and cried with teammate Brooklyn Moores, a former elite player for Canada.
But there was still another chance – the Asian Championships in May. The other athlete who placed highest in the individual all-around would qualify.
“She left her grief on the floor that day and got up, and she's continued to do so ever since,” McDonald said.
They scrambled to prepare because Malabuyo needed to compete in all four events, something she hadn't done at a top-level meet since 2021. McDonald said Malabuyo hadn't vaulted in more than a year and hadn't been able to practice her rotations on bars because of a shoulder injury.
In the deciding match in Uzbekistan, Malabuyo was forced to wait after a strong performance. If a skater from a country that did not have the maximum number of qualifiers could score better than her score in the next two sessions, her Olympic ambitions would be over. In the end, the score from her final rotation confirmed that Malabuyo had won a place in Paris by just 0.033 points (less than the penalty for a minor error). Malabuyo became the third Filipino-American skater to qualify for Paris.
They're unlikely to win a medal — they're here for all those other moments — and for Philippine gymnasts, who haven't had a female gymnast reach this level in a long time, Finnegan said, “I hope the dream opens up.”
