Shane Wiskus returns at 2026 U.S. Gymnastics Championships Phoenix; LA28 bid within reach

2026 U.S. Gymnastics Championships: Shane Wiskus is back from a lost year, and afraid of nothing

The Paris 2024 alternate rebuilt his shoulder with one purpose, made peace with facing his biggest fear, and turned up at his 11th U.S. Championships chasing the feeling again.

Before the operation, Tokyo 2020 Olympian Shane Wiskus had a choice, and his surgeon put it to him plainly: rebuild his shoulder to do gymnastics , or rebuild it for everyday life.

They were two different surgeries. Wiskus took the one that kept his sport an option.

“I told myself, I want to rehab it to get back to gymnastics readiness, so that even if I don’t continue, I’ll have a rock solid shoulder and I’ll be ready to go for the rest of my life,” the 27-year-old told Olympics.com this week ahead of his return to the U.S. Gymnastics Championships in Phoenix. “But I always kind of knew deep down that I was rehabbing it for gymnastics.”

That was February 2025. Wiskus, the Paris 2024 U.S. team alternate, had taken time off after the Games and performing in Simone Biles ’ Gold Over America Tour before an operation to clean up the labrum in his shoulder and anchor his biceps tendon.

Most of 2025 was spent rehabbing. He started training fully again in September and got back to the competition floor in February, one year post-op.

But Winter Cup, his first meet back, didn’t go to plan. That made the final qualifier in June all-or-nothing.

“I was extremely nervous, because I was like, ‘Well, if I don’t make it here, then my season is done’,” he said.

He did more than make it, he felt in command as he posted an 84.157 score in the all-around, marking him as a national contender once more.

“I felt like I was the one in the driver’s seat. And whenever I feel like that, I do well,” said Wiskus.

In Phoenix, he sits third after the first night of competition behind Frederick Richard and Danila Leykin.

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Shane Wiskus: “My cheeks were just glued to my ears”

Somewhere in the middle of his long rehab came a moment he still holds onto. Cleared to swing again, he took his first little baby swings on high bar in Colorado.

“My cheeks were just glued to my ears,” he said. “I was so happy just to be swinging again.”

The harder thing to rebuild was the disappointment.

In Paris, Wiskus was the alternate – a spectacular two days of competition in front of an electric home crowd at the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials wasn’t quite enough for a return trip to the Games.

The team won bronze without him.

“That’s a lot of people’s biggest fear,” he said. “You get so close, and then you’re the alternate and you have to go and watch the guys compete. You don’t actually get the medal around your neck. But having gone through that, it’s really not that bad. My life didn’t change at all.”

Time did the work, he said – distance, travel, friends, family. So did the people who kept telling him he should have been out there.

“Just because I didn’t make the Olympic team doesn’t mean that I’m not still a good gymnast,” he said.

A national title this week would mean something, then – proof to himself as much as anyone that there is more still ahead. It would also put him squarely in the hunt for the Olympic Games LA28 .

Now, he said, there isn’t much left to be afraid of.

“I’ve had plenty of bad competitions and been just fine after. I’ve had plenty of great competitions and also been fine after,” he said. “I’m not really afraid of anything.”