Jade Carey Wasn’t Feeling Well Leading Up to Fall During Gymnastics Qualifiers

Jade Carey unfortunately won’t have the opportunity to defend her gold medal in the women’s floor exercise — and she’s opening up about what went wrong.

The gymnast, competing in her second Olympic Games for Team USA, fell during her floor exercise routine in the women’s artistic gymnastics qualification round on July 28 at Paris’ Bercy Arena. She finished 74th with a score of 10.633.

Only the top eight gymnasts, with a limit of two per country, qualified for the individual final. Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles will compete in the individual floor exercise event for Team USA. Carey did, though, put together a strong vault, finishing third overall behind Biles and Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade, and will take part in the individual vault competition.

Hours later, Carey, 24, shared photos from the competition on Instagram, writing, “all heart 🤍 not the day i was expecting to have but i can’t thank you all enough for the love and support. i am so proud of this team and what we accomplished today. we’re not done yet 🫶.”

She told Olympics.com that she had been under the weather leading up to competition. “I just have not been feeling well the past few days and haven’t been able to eat or anything,” Carey said. “I had, like, no energy today and didn’t really have a sense of what was going on in my head. So, I just kind of wanted people to know that so, they know that there’s actually something wrong.”

Olympics.com noted that Carey’s coach, her father Brian Carey, was also not feeling well last week and missed the women’s podium training on July 25. USA Gymnastics confirmed the reason for the coach’s absence in a post on X at the time.

Carey got support in the comments from many fellow gymnasts, including 2008 all-around champion Nastia Liukin, who wrote, “Proud of you Jade!!”

On X, Aly Raisman, a two-time gymnastics Olympian, also shared encouragement for Carey. “you did so well today & I’m so proud of you!!! It breaks my heart that our society is so hard on athletes that you feel the need to explain yourself.”

Added Raisman, “You’re human It’s ok to make mistakes. I can’t wait to watch you in the days to come & I hope you feel better.”

The women’s competition picks back up on Tuesday, July 30 with the team final, for which Carey will compete.

Later this week the individual finals begin, first with the all-around on Thursday, Aug. 1. Biles and Tokyo 2020 champion Suni Lee will compete for America. It will mark the first time that two all-around gold medalists have gone head-to-head at an Olympic Games.

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