PARIS, France — When Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles flies through the air, she's missing a cape — but a newly acquired gold medal makes up for that.
Chiles and Team USA gymnastics won the gold medal on Tuesday at the Paris Olympics, beating Italy and Brazil for the top spot. It's the first gold for 23-year-old Chiles, fulfilling a long-awaited dream for the Washington athlete.
“My favorite thing about being a gymnast is knowing that I feel like a superhero," Chiles said. "I love superheroes. And every apparatus or event that we do, I feel like I'm flying, especially on bars. I feel like I'm Spiderman.”
At the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Chiles helped the United States take home a silver medal in the team competition.
"That medal is something I was really, really proud of, and I'm always going to be proud of it," Chiles said. "I look at that medal each and every day knowing that [those were] the times where I was crying at practice or I was just frustrated or didn't want to do the sport anymore or I wanted to quit. There was just a lot of things that I was thinking about knowing that I got a silver medal at the most biggest stage in the whole world."
Winning an Olympic medal was an early dream for Chiles, who grew up in Vancouver, Washington.
It’s also where Chiles first fell in love with the Olympics. She first started watching in 2008 when she was seven years old.
“I, honestly, it was a tradition for us with my mom," Chiles said. "We had to stay up every day watching every sport. And for me, then I just had started gymnastics. So, it really wasn't something that I was like, 'Oh, I want to go to the Olympics for gymnastics.' It was just like, that seems cool. I'm seeing all these amazing people fulfill something that they've always wanted to fulfill, and let's see if I could do that."
It didn’t take Chiles long to show Olympic potential. In 2018, she won three gold medals at the Pacific Rim Championships. In 2019, her family decided it would be best for Chiles to move to Texas to train with Simone Biles.
At first, Chiles said, she wasn’t intimidated but knew she was training alongside one of the most talented gymnasts in the world.
“I was just like, ‘OK, I know I'm not the only person at this gym that is a high athlete,’ and she's going to be able to push me and do everything that I need to do,” Chiles said. “So being around her, it was like she was a big sister to me. She was a mentor to me.”
Her time with Biles vaulted Chiles to another level. But, her road to a second Olympic team wasn't easy. She found success at the University of California, Los Angeles, but didn’t make the U.S. Team for the most recent world championships.
Chiles was an underdog for the Paris team but triumphed at the trials.
Her years of dedication to the sport paid off with Tuesday's win. The 2024 team joined the ranks of gold medal wins in 2016, 2012 and 1996.
"We’re going to grind and work hard to get that gold again, but at the end of the day, no matter what happens, it doesn't define who we are as people," Chiles said prior to the Olympic Games. "But … Team USA wants every gold in this world because it's a really cool piece, it's a really cool statement to who you are, and it's always going to be in history books.”