--- title: "Veteran U.S. gymnasts return in Phoenix; Depth for LA28 Olympic team" sdDatePublished: "2026-08-10T13:13:00Z" source: "https://www.olympics.com/en/news/2026-u-s-gymnastics-championships-the-comebacks-keep-coming-and-the-u-s-team-is-counting-on-them" topics: - name: "gymnastics" identifier: "medtop:20000942" - name: "Olympic Games" identifier: "medtop:20001177" locations: - "Barcelona" - "Los Angeles" - "Atlanta" - "Phoenix" - "Seattle" - "Île-de-France" - "United States" --- Veteran U.S. gymnasts return in Phoenix; Depth for LA28 Olympic team 2026 U.S. Gymnastics Championships: The comebacks keep coming, and the U.S. team is counting on them 2026 U.S. Gymnastics Championships: The comebacks keep coming, and the U.S. team is counting on them With a home Games two years out, the veterans returning to the floor are reshaping what the American squad can be at LA28. Two years out from a home Olympic Games, U.S. gymnastics is having a reunion. Suni Lee has signaled a return. Katelyn Ohashi , at 29, returned after years away. Jade Carey is back after a post-Paris break. Skye Blakely is competing in the all-around again after the Achilles tear that cost her a place at the Olympic Games Paris 2024 . Shilese Jones , the two-time World all-around medallist, continues to tease a return on Instagram. Simone Biles , the seven-time Olympic champion and 23-time world gold medallist, hasn't ruled out a return, either. And Betty Okino , watching the field fill up, sees something the U.S. program did not have a year ago. "It creates depth on our team," said Okino, a Barcelona 1992 bronze medallist and now the developmental lead for the U.S. women's program. Before the comebacks, she said, the thinking was "that we're gonna have to, like, scrape to create a team for 2028. Now – we have good depth to select from." The pull of a home Games at LA28 is obvious. Okino is careful to say it is not enough on its own. "The home Games is part of the inspiration," she said, "but again, if the drive inside isn't something beyond that – it's hard to do." Elite gymnastics at this level, she added, asks for more. "Inside each of them, there's this little piece of fire that is saying, I need to do this, for some other reason." The Magnificent Seven's home-Games lesson for LA28 Home soil once carried an American team to a historic gold. Amanda Borden and Shannon Miller were part of the Magnificent Seven, the first U.S. women's team to win Olympic gold, at the Atlanta 1996 Games. Miller had gone to her first Games at 15 in Barcelona 1992 and could not walk away. "Back then it was one and done," she said Sunday (9 August) ahead of the final night of competition at the U.S. Gymnastics Championships in Phoenix. "Who does more than one Olympics? You do one and you're done. And I was back in the gym three days after the '92 Games." What kept her going is the question she now puts to this generation. "For these athletes that have already accomplished so much ... you have to figure out what's your why," Miller said. For Borden, who missed out on 1992 but went on to captain the 1996 team, the home Games did the rest. "It lit a fire and reminded me personally why I even started gymnastics," she said. "I never did gymnastics to be in [the Olympics]. I did gymnastics because I loved it. And that was my secret sauce going into '96." Betty Okino on Katelyn Ohashi's return: "It says that we're doing something right in the program" Okino knows the pull, and its limits, she says, having weighed another run herself after Barcelona. "I didn't have the heart to do what you need to do in order to make another Olympic team," she recalled. That makes her a believer in the ones who still do. Ohashi is the case she keeps coming back to – a gymnast who walked away from a sport she had found painful. Years later, she's choosing to walk back in. "She wants to come to a sport that she left – because she felt hurt by it," Okino said. "She wants to come back to it now, and she feels welcomed by it and happy on this stage – it says that we're doing something right in the program." Ohashi, now training under Cale Robinson at Pacific Reign in Seattle and reunited with her old UCLA coach Valorie Kondos Field for her floor choreography, feels it too. "There's been so much love that I've seen online, so it was definitely cool to hear it in person," she said of the U.S. Classic crowd, site of her first major competition in seven years. "The signs were really what got me." Carey has had the conversation with Lee, the two of them circling the same idea. "It's really exciting to have a lot of us coming back," she said. "I think we both kind of have a similar mindset of just like we still know that we have more in us. And why not, as long as we love gymnastics and can still do it." The veterans are changing the math for everyone around them. Okino sees the younger seniors being pushed for the better. "They're not at the top now anymore," she said. "They have to climb a little bit more – and I think that's just going to raise the level." Blakely, back in the all-around in Phoenix after her own comeback from injury, counts herself among the older group now and finds the wave in front of her steadying. "It's really encouraging to see Jade, Katelyn and Leanne [Wong], all three people who are older than me, pave that path," Blakely said. "To see that it's possible no matter the age. If you set your mind to it, you can do it." Picture by Melissa J. Perenson