Jacob Dalton, a two-time U.S. Olympic gymnast, has retired at age 25.
“I could kind of feel my body going downhill,” Dalton said, according to Inside Gymnastics magazine, adding that he plans to help manage his parents’ Nevada gyms. “It [was] definitely a struggle to maintain peak conditioning getting ready for the [Rio] Olympics. I tried to take a little bit of a break and recover. It was really hard to enjoy going into the gym every single day, hurting that much on all the events. … I wanted to end my career on a high note [the Olympics].”
Dalton came back from August 2015 surgery for a shoulder tear to make his second Olympic team last year. He also underwent knee surgery in March and had not competed since Rio.
Dalton made the floor exercise finals at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, placing fifth and sixth, respectively. He also was part of the U.S. team’s fifth-place finishes at both Games.
Dalton collected four world championships medals — team bronze in 2011, floor exercise silver in 2012 and team bronze and vault bronze in 2014.
In the last five months, four U.S. men’s stalwarts announced the ends of their careers — Dalton, Jonathan Horton, Danell Leyva and John Orozco. They made up four-fifths of the 2012 Olympic team.
The U.S. program is now led by two-time Olympian Sam Mikulak, who won every U.S. all-around title in the previous Olympic cycle but is coming back from a February Achilles injury that required surgery.
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