--- title: "Jade Carey returns to elite gymnastics at 2026 U.S. Championships in Phoenix; aims to peak for LA28" sdDatePublished: "2026-08-08T08:13:00Z" source: "https://www.olympics.com/en/news/2026-us-gymnastics-championships-jade-carey-driving-bus-la28" topics: - name: "gymnastics" identifier: "medtop:20000942" - name: "Olympic Games" identifier: "medtop:20001177" - name: "sport" identifier: "medtop:15000000" locations: - "Phoenix" --- Jade Carey returns to elite gymnastics at 2026 U.S. Championships in Phoenix; aims to peak for LA28 2026 U.S. Gymnastics Championships: Jade Carey getting back up to speed, but she's "driving the bus" toward LA28 2026 U.S. Gymnastics Championships: Jade Carey getting back up to speed, but she's "driving the bus" toward LA28 The two-time Olympic champion, with her father alongside, returned to elite competition this spring on a single principle: pace it out. Jade Carey knows exactly where she is going, and she is in no hurry to get there. The Tokyo 2020 Olympic floor exercise champion and Paris 2024 team gold medalist returned to elite gymnastics this spring after stepping away after her second Games and the end of her NCAA career, and from the first meet back she and her father and coach, Brian Carey, agreed on the shape of the comeback: slow. "There's kind of two ways we could have approached it," Brian Carey told Olympics.com following the U.S. Classic last month. One was to build to full difficulty by these U.S. Championships, now underway in Phoenix, then scale back down before a peak ahead of October's World Championships. They chose the other path. "We decided to go with just more like a slow build and just keep building, because what we're building towards, she can already do," Brian Carey explained. "So we just need to pace her out." The plan has a shorthand in the Carey household. " I hold the map, you drive the bus ," Brian Carey says he tells his daughter. " But you're ultimately driving the bus ." Jade Carey is driving it deliberately. At the U.S. Classic, her first major competition back, she called the night – where she finished second in the all-around to Reese Esponda – a start, not a statement. "I wouldn't say it was great, but it was definitely a step in the right direction for where I want to be at Championships," she said afterward. She has framed the whole season the same way. "I think more of a steady climb, especially for this first year back in it," Carey said. "I don't want to push anything that I'm not quite ready for, so kind of just taking that day by day." For a stretch, the day-by-day was a grind. "It was just kind of a roller coaster," she said. "Some days I'm like, 'Oh yeah, I got this,' and other days, I'm really tired, this is really hard." About two weeks before the Classic, she said, everything "was starting to click, and I was feeling a little more like myself". Medal Moment | Tokyo 2020: Artistic Gymnastics - J Carey (USA) A truly medal-worthy performance from J Carey. Take a look at one of their greatest moments! The fire behind Jade Carey's comeback There is a reason for the patience beyond the calendar. A hip injury in January cost Carey eight weeks – she could not do a round-off, which made training vault nearly impossible. She made do, however, by back tumbling out of standing back handsprings on the TumblTrak. In the spring, as the comeback began, she waved off any rush the same way. "I'm remembering that it's only May," she told Olympics.com then. Brian Carey said he had given a run at a third Olympic Games 50-50 odds, and he had on condition before it began. He had asked her to take at least a month out of the gym – first after the Olympics, then again after her college season wrapped the following spring. She did, but then, she drifted back in. "She came back in, started playing around again, and she still has it," he said. " I just wanted to see if she had the fire. She has the fire. She knows what it takes, she knows the grind, she knows it's going to be hard ." The build points toward one place. Carey, 26, has said she sees the Olympic Games LA28 as the finish line – the end of a career that has already given her what she came for. "I do really fully see this next three years or whatever it is, two years, as the end of my gymnastics journey," she told Olympics.com. "So really just going out with being proud of myself and knowing that I gave it my all." This week, the map only goes as far as the next routine, and it happens to lead home. Carey grew up in Phoenix, and these championships bring her back to where it all started. "I grew up doing gymnastics here, so it's really kind of a full-circle moment for me to be able to compete elite in this arena," she said. "Honestly, kind of sounds cliché, but doing it for me and just for the love of the sport that I have," she continued. "I am still in a place where I'm physically and mentally able to do what I love." Picture by Melissa J. Perenson