Suni Lee to leave Auburn after this season, return to elite gymnastics for Olympic run

By OlympicTalkNov 15, 2022, 2:27 PM EST

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Olympic all-around champion Suni Lee said her upcoming sophomore season at Auburn will be her last and that she will return to elite gymnastics after this winter in a bid for the 2024 Paris Games.

“I don’t want it [the Olympics] to just be once in a lifetime,” she said in a video posted Tuesday. “I have my sights set on Paris in 2024, and I know what I have to do to get there. I’m looking forward to rolling up my sleeves and putting in the work.”

Lee, 19, hasn’t competed in elite international gymnastics since the Tokyo Games. She competed last winter and spring for Auburn in the NCAA, which has a different scoring system than the Olympics and usually requires different routines.

She took runner-up in April’s NCAA Championships all-around behind Trinity Thomas of Florida. She also won the balance beam title and helped Auburn to a fourth-place team finish, the best in program in history.

Lee then signaled a return to elite in July by participating in her first U.S. national team camp since the Tokyo Games.

Without Lee (and without Rio Olympic all-around champ Simone Biles), the U.S. women’s gymnastics team won the world title two weeks ago. Shilese Jones took all-around silver at worlds, where Lee’s Tokyo Olympic teammates Jade Carey and Jordan Chiles each won three medals.

The upcoming NCAA season runs from January into April. Lee has not said whether she plans to return to elite competition for the summer 2023 season, or if it will be in 2024 before the Paris Games.

Most Olympic medalist gymnasts who took breaks from elite came back before the Olympic year. Biles returned from a two-year competition break in 2018. Gabby Douglas and Aly Raisman took time off after the 2012 London Games and returned to competition in March 2015.

Biles has not competed since Tokyo and also not ruled out a return ahead of Paris 2024.

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thank you to my @AuburnU family, you’ll forever have a special place in my heart. let’s make this season the best one yet. WAR EAGLE! pic.twitter.com/8ezp9WdM04

— Sunisa lee (@sunisalee_) November 15, 2022

Brody Malone ends gymnastics worlds with high bar gold; U.S. women win more medals

By OlympicTalkNov 6, 2022, 12:27 PM EST

Brody Malone ensured the U.S. men didn’t finish the world gymnastics championships without a medal. He also ensured they didn’t leave without a gold medal.

Malone became the second American to win on the capstone men’s apparatus at worlds — high bar — after Kurt Thomas in 1979. Malone, one year after taking bronze at worlds and missing his first Olympic medal by one spot, had what NBC Sports’ John Roethlisberger called his best high bar routine ever and scored 14.800 points.

That was enough to defeat Olympic and world all-around champion Daiki Hashimoto of Japan by one tenth in Liverpool, England.

Malone, the two-time U.S. all-around champion, capped a world championships where he improved throughout finals. He had a poor team final on Wednesday (the U.S. finished fifth), improved to place fourth in the all-around on Friday and then upgraded to the top of the podium in the very last event Sunday.

“This week was pretty rough for us,” Malone said, according to the International Gymnastics Federation. “It just seemed like we were building up. This was a good one to end on.”

GYMNASTICS WORLDS: Results

Earlier Sunday, Jordan Chiles and Jade Carey gave the U.S. two more medals. The Tokyo Olympians earned floor exercise silver and bronze, respectively, for their third medals of worlds.

Jessica Gadirova of Great Britain took gold with 14.200 points. She overtook Chiles, who scored 13.833 to add to her medal collection (team gold, vault silver).

Chiles originally tied Carey, and held the tiebreaker. Carey or the U.S. team challenged the difficulty score given to Carey’s routine, hoping it would be increased, Roethlisberger said. The review actually led to that score being lowered by one tenth, which meant Carey went from solo bronze to sharing bronze with Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade.

Carey previously earned team gold and vault gold.

The U.S. was the only nation to win two women’s golds at worlds and had seven total women’s medals, distancing second-place Great Britain’s three. The Americans were expected to excel in the absence of Russian gymnasts who won the Olympic team title and are banned due to the invasion of Ukraine.

The Americans did not have Olympic all-around champions Simone Biles and Suni Lee (on indefinite, perhaps permanent breaks from competition) and national all-around champion Konnor McClain (back injury).

Also Sunday, Hazuki Watanabe became the second consecutive Japanese woman to win the world title on balance beam, scoring 13.600 and edging Ellie Black by 34 thousandths of a point. Black won Canada’s 13th world championships medal in history — all silver or bronze.

The top two qualifiers, China’s Ou Yushan and American Skye Blakely, fell off the beam. Blakely, 17, had a medal-contending routine going until a late fall, after her hair ribbon started coming undone and flapping around her face.

Absent from worlds were last year’s Olympic champion (Guan Chenchen, who the Chinese federation says retired) and world champion (Urara Ashikawa).

China’s Zou Jingyuan added his record-tying third world title on parallel bars to his Olympic title from last year. He scored 16.166 points, distancing Olympic silver medalist Lukas Dauser of Germany by .666. The 2021 World champion, Hu Xuwei, was not on China’s team this year.

In men’s vault, Armenian Artur Davtyan dethroned defending world champion Carlos Yulo of the Philippines by one tenth, averaging two vaults. Davtyan, 30 and the Olympic bronze medalist, became the first Armenian to win a world gymnastics title.

Olympic gold medalist Shin Jea-Hwan of South Korea did not compete at worlds.

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Jade Carey wins vault at world gymnastics championships, redemption from Olympics

By OlympicTalkNov 5, 2022, 5:26 PM EDT

Jade Carey won the world gymnastics championships title on vault in an American one-two, a measure of redemption from the Olympics.

Carey, 22, averaged 14.516 points between two vaults in Liverpool, England, on Saturday. Countrywoman Jordan Chiles earned silver, .166 of a point behind, for her first career individual medal at a global championships.

Coline Devillard took bronze to become the first Frenchwoman to win an Olympic or world gymnastics medal since 2009.

GYMNASTICS WORLDS: Broadcast Schedule | Results

Last year, Carey entered the Olympic vault final as the top qualifier after Simone Biles‘ withdrawal. But Carey misstepped on her run-up for her first vault in Tokyo and had to bail out with a simpler skill, taking her out of medal contention. She finished eighth in the eight-woman final, then won floor exercise the next day.

“I’m proud of myself for bouncing back,” Carey said Saturday.

Carey, the world vault silver medalist in 2017 and 2019, became the fifth different American to win the world title on the apparatus dating to 2009, joining Kayla Williams, Alicia Sacramone, McKayla Maroney and Biles.

Carey, who made a late move up to the elite level at age 17, is also the fifth American woman to own individual Olympic and world titles after Shannon Miller, Nastia Liukin, Shawn Johnson and Biles.

Saturday’s final lacked 2021 Olympic and World champion Rebeca Andrade of Brazil, who didn’t make the top eight after slipping off the table on one of her vaults in qualifying.

Also Saturday, American Shilese Jones followed her all-around silver medal with another silver on uneven bars at her first worlds. China’s Wei Xiaoyuan repeated as world champion. Belgium’s Nina Derwael, the Olympic gold medalist and two-time world champion, earned bronze.

Rhys McClenaghan became the first Irish gymnast to win a world title, dethroning American Stephen Nedoroscik on pommel horse. The top qualifier McClenaghan, who won Ireland’s first world medal in 2019 (bronze), scored 15.300 points.

Nedoroscik, who last year became the first American to win a world title on pommel horse, tallied 14.400 for fifth place. He would have taken silver if he repeated his score from qualifying.

The event lacked two-time Olympic champion Max Whitlock of Great Britain, on a break from competition since Tokyo.

Giarnni Regini-Moran became the first British man to win a world floor exercise title, edging Olympic and world all-around champion Daiki Hashimoto of Japan, 14.533 to 14.500.

Last year’s world champion, Nicola Bartolini of Italy, placed fifth. Carlos Yulo of the Philippines, the top qualifier by a half-point, fell on his first tumbling pass and finished seventh. Olympic champion Artem Dolgopyat of Israel failed to qualify for the final.

Adem Asil became the second man from Turkey to win the still rings title in the last three worlds. Asil tallied 14.933 points to edge Zou Jingyuan of China (14.866). Last year’s Olympic and world champions from China — Liu Yang and Lan Xingyu — did not compete at worlds this year.

Worlds conclude Sunday with the second and last day of individual apparatus finals including Americans Carey and Chiles on floor, Skye Blakely on uneven bars and Brody Malone on high bar.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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