“When you felt like everything could be in shambles and there’s that one thing that can lift it up… that’s what I felt like UCLA Gymnastics did for me.” Jordan Chiles didn’t hold back when opening up about the storm she weathered post-Paris Olympics. For many, that summer was a celebration of athletic excellence, but for Chiles, it left behind a wound deeper than what met the eye. The pain of watching a medal slip away, the pressure of Olympic expectations, and the weight of silence that followed. She carried it all.
Her return to college gymnastics this season wasn’t just about routines and ribbons. It was about survival. It was about reclaiming joy. After a year off to chase Olympic dreams, Jordan came back to UCLA and found something she hadn’t realized she needed so badly. In a year where the Bruins made history, scoring a program-best 198.450 at the Big Ten Championships and securing both the regular season and conference titles for the first time ever, Chiles wasn’t just part of the story. She was its heartbeat. They may have taken the medal in Paris, but they couldn’t take her spirit.
The official ESPNW account hit Twitter, posting a video with the caption, “Jordan Chiles’ journey from the Paris Olympics to the NCAA Championship had its fair share of ups and downs.” And it truly did. Behind every routine this season was a deeper, more personal story. After Paris, the backlash was swift and unforgiving. “I was not able to even move. I was stuck in my bed,” she shared in a gut-wrenching interview. The weight of online hate forced her to shut down, literally and emotionally. “I was mentally gone, mentally not okay… Occasionally I don’t post for a reason because I never know what the comments are going to say… What’s going to happen this time? What am I going to have to see on Twitter?” Her words reveal just how brutal the spotlight can be when it turns on you.
Jordan Chiles’ journey from the Paris Olympics to the NCAA Championship had its fair share of ups and downs.
Watch the story continue in the NCAA Semifinals LIVE on ESPN2 pic.twitter.com/pxf9QYPuo9
— espnW (@espnW) April 17, 2025
But even in the darkness, she searched for light. “It was finally something that I felt the encouragement back in myself… It felt like finally I was like, this is what it’s like to compete again.” That something was UCLA Gymnastics. It wasn’t just about sticking a landing anymore. It was about standing back up. About finding a rhythm to life again. She wasn’t trying to escape Paris, she was trying to feel whole after it. And for the first time in a long time, the roar of the Pauley Pavilion crowd gave her more than adrenaline. It gave her healing.
Long before Paris, long before the medals and the pressure, gymnastics had already saved Jordan once. In her memoir I’m That Girl: Living The Power Of My Dreams, she opened up about growing up with ADHD and struggling to control her spontaneous, hyperactive energy. “My sport saved my life. I had really, really bad ADHD when I was younger, and gymnastics helped me calm down. I fell in love with flipping around and doing crazy things. I always had a very spontaneous mind.” That love, that raw joy for movement, is what brought her back. And without it, without her, gymnastics just wouldn’t be the same.
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