Editor’s note: Simone Biles made her third Olympic squad, highlighting the U.S. Olympic women’s gymnastics team for the Paris Games.
MINNEAPOLIS – Shilese Jones is out of the rest of the Olympic trials.
Jones injured her knee on vault in pre-meet warmups on Friday night, and scratched all but uneven bars. USA Gymnastics said the decision to not compete Sunday was made after she was re-evaluated Saturday.
The five-woman team will be named after Sunday’s competition.
Jones seemed to foreshadow the announcement, posting an Instagram story of herself with Beacon, the therapy dog who comes to USA Gymnastics events, with the caption, “Don’t know what i’d do without Beacon.”
Jones had established herself as almost as much of a lock for the Paris squad as Simone Biles, winning all-around medals at the last two world championships. She arrived at trials nursing a shoulder injury that kept her out of the national championships earlier this month, but coach Sarah Korngold said she was ready to compete.
In warmups on Friday, however, Jones landed her vault and fell to the mat, clutching her right leg. Biles ran over to check on her, and Jones sat on the podium for several minutes before being helped backstage by Korngold and a medical staffer.
Jones was to start on vault, but scratched after testing her knee with a run down the runway. She managed to do uneven bars, and her 14.675 was the highest of the night on the event. She then scratched her remaining two events.
Though gymnasts cannot petition onto the Olympic team, Jones is still eligible to be considered because she did compete here. Whether it will be enough is up to the committee.
Losing Jones would be a significant blow for the U.S. women. She has been one of the world’s best gymnasts over the last two seasons, helping the Americans win gold at both the 2022 and 2023 world championships in addition to her all-around medals. Like at last year’s worlds, she would have been expected to compete on all four events in the team finals, where every score counts.
Get Olympics updates in your texts! Join USA TODAY Sports’ WhatsApp Channel
But Jones’ health became an issue in May. She tore the labrum in her right shoulder in 2022, but has been able to manage it with a deliberate approach to training and competition. After finishing second to Biles at the U.S. Classic, however, the pain got so bad she “barely could raise my arm” a week before the national championships.
Jones, who trains outside Seattle, traveled to Fort Worth, Texas, for nationals, and the USA Gymnastics medical staff said her shoulder hadn’t gotten structurally worse. But she withdrew from the U.S. championships, not wanting to make the pain and inflammation worse and hoping the extra rest would allow her to make it to Paris.
“We’ve slowly been building back up into routines. So she’s been doing her full routines,” Korngold said Wednesday. “Obviously we don’t have as many repetitions as maybe we would like, but her body’s feeling good and so we still feel like we made the right decision” pulling out of nationals.
An injury so close to the Olympics is particularly cruel for Jones. She finished 10th at the Olympic trials in 2021, and the top nine athletes either made the team or went to Tokyo as alternates. The U.S. women also only took four alternates while the men took five.
Then, in December 2021, Jones’ father died after a long battle with a kidney disease. The two had been particularly close, with Sylvester Jones often the one who would take Jones to gymnastics practice. Though Jones had originally planned to be done with elite gymnastics after Tokyo regardless of what happened, her father encouraged her before his death to rethink that decision.
Jones, her mother and sisters moved back to Seattle, where they were from, and Jones re-dedicated herself to the sport with the goal of getting to Paris.