Skye Blakely was supposed to be competing here. She would have been an Olympian this weekend. Instead, she stood on crutches, her leg heavily bandaged. She ruptured her Achilles tendon in training two days before the women's competition here began, a bleak omen for a tournament marked by key injuries.
Gymnast Serie Jones, who is ranked second all-around in the country, has been plagued by a shoulder injury and appears to have hurt her foot while practicing vault in warmups before the first day of competition on Friday night. Jones only performed on bars and received the highest score on the apparatus that night, but concerns about her health have put her Olympic hopes in doubt. Like Blakely, Jones entered the preliminaries as a favorite to make the Olympic team.
Kayla DiCello, the first to compete after Jones' warm-up scare, botched her vault as she reached the platform, abandoning her intended double twist and tumbling backwards as she landed on the mat.
DiCello sat on the mat, grimacing and shaking her head. She left the arena in a wheelchair and later suffered an Achilles injury. She will not play in Sunday's match.
Each disappointment was a brutal reminder that Olympic dreams depend as much on luck and timing as they do on potential and ability.
The competition continued with the top three contenders failing to deliver perfect performances. Simone Biles took the lead by a large margin with a total score of 58.900. Biles closed the night with the difficult Yurchenko double pike vault that she made her name with. She soared and controlled the landing, and fans rose to their feet to celebrate the amazing performance. Biles earned an impressive score of 15.975 for the vault, the highest score she has received in this Olympic cycle.
Biles was shaky on the balance beam but continued to perform to the end and avoided major mistakes on the other events. If Biles wins the all-around, she will almost certainly qualify for the Olympics. The four skaters who will accompany Biles in Paris will be chosen by a three-person selection committee. Jordan Childs worked tirelessly to be one of the skaters selected. She placed second with 56.400 points and earned at least 14.000 points on the vault, balance beam, and floor exercise.
Olympic all-around champion Sunisa Li is going from strength to strength. Last year, kidney-related health issues severely limited her training. With each event this season, she added more difficult moves to her routines and proved herself a medal contender in Paris. Her all-around score (56.025) was good enough for third place, not far behind Chile.
With injuries to Blakely and DiCello and Jones' questionable availability, the selection committee will need to find other contributors to the U.S. team. Jade Carey solidified herself as a strong contributor to the team with a score of 14.600 on vault and 14.075 on floor exercise. Jocelyn Roberson, who placed fifth in the all-around, has similar strengths but did not score as highly as Carey on those events.
