NEW ORLEANS — Hezly Rivera met the second.
The 17-year-old Olympic gold medalist pulled away for a victory on the U.S. gymnastics championships on Sunday, trying greater than able to be the standard-bearer for the ladies’s program within the early phases of the run-up to the 2028 Video games in Los Angeles.
Rivera, the youngest member of the five-woman staff that completed atop the rostrum in Paris a 12 months in the past, posted a two-day complete of 112.000 simply eight-tenths (0.8) away from runner-up Leanne Wong.
Three weeks after a shaky meet on the U.S. Traditional, the place she completed a distant twelfth, Rivera responded with the form of polished efficiency that each one however assured her of a spot on the four-woman world championship staff that may head to Jakarta, Indonesia, in October.
Rivera, on the very least, locked up a spot on the earth championship choice camp subsequent month. So did Wong, a four-time world championship medalist. Third-place finisher Joscelyn Roberson, an Olympic alternate final summer season, additionally figures to be on the choice camp because the three veterans put important distance between themselves and the remainder of a remarkably younger discipline.
Not like Asher Hong’s straightforward win within the males’s competitors on Saturday, issues didn’t come simply for Rivera. She was pushed by 4 rotations by Wong, a pre-med scholar at Florida and a budding entrepreneur who has been remarkably constant during the last four-plus years.
Wong put stress on Rivera from the beginning with a caught Cheng vault and did not relent over the course of two hours. Rivera responded every time — she posted the highest scores on three of the 4 occasions — but it surely wasn’t till she walked off the rostrum following her ground routine with victory in hand that she might chill out.
Roberson regarded able to make it a three-woman race till she tweaked her ankle on ground train throughout the second rotation. The rising sophomore at Arkansas, visibly limping at instances, continued on anyway. She gritted her manner by her vault dismount, although the five-tenths (0.5) deduction for utilizing an extra pad for her safety took her out of rivalry for the all-around.
Skye Blakely, who was injured on the Olympic Trials in each 2021 and 2024, was chic on each uneven bars and steadiness beam to place herself in consideration to make the world staff.