Olympian Hezly Rivera edges Leanne Wong for victory at the US gymnastics championships

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Hezly Rivera was the fresh face a year ago. The newcomer. The teenager on a team of 20-something Olympic gymnasts, doing her best to absorb what she could from Simone Biles, Sunisa Lee, Jade Carey and Jordan Chiles.

The one thing that stood out, even more than the sometimes otherworldly gymnastics, is the way her fellow gold-medal-winning teammates went about their business.

“They looked so confident,” Rivera said. “They’re like, ‘I’m going to go out and I’m going to hit.’ It gave me that confidence as well.”

Looks like it.

The now 17-year-old who says she’s paying no attention to the idea that she’s the leader of the women’s program in the early stages of the run-up to the 2028 Olympics certainly looks the part.

Buoyed by a polished steadiness – and a beam routine that finally looked the way it does back home at her home gym in Texas – Rivera captured her first national title Sunday night at the U.S. Championships. Her two-day total of 112.000 was good enough to fend off a challenge from Leanne Wong and put her in excellent position to lead the four-woman American delegation at the world championships in Jakarta, Indonesia, in October.

Rivera, by far the youngest member of the five-woman team that finished atop the podium in Paris a year ago, bounced back from a shaky performance at the U.S. Classic last month with the kind of measured, refined gymnastics that she attributed to simply “letting go” of whatever pressure she might feel as the lone Olympic gold medalist in a remarkably young field.

“No matter how rough the competition is, I still can get back into the gym and work hard because all those months previously that I’ve been working hard, I know it’s going to show up eventually,” she said. “So it kind of just took a weight off my shoulders.”

Rivera, at the very least, locked up a spot in the world championship selection camp next month. So did Wong, a four-time world championship medalist, budding entrepreneur and pre-med student who shows no signs of slowing down despite years of competing collegiately and at the elite level simultaneously.

Asked how she juggles it all, the 21-year-old who insists she doesn’t keep a planner said she lives by the motto “there’s time for everything.”

Joscelyn Roberson, an Olympic alternate last summer, shook off an ankle injury suffered at the end of her floor routine to finish third as the three most internationally experienced athletes in the field looked ready to lead after spending most of the last Olympic quad learning from Biles and company.

“You go from, ‘Oh you’re so young, you’re so young,’ to, ‘Oh, you are the older kid,'” the 19-year-old Roberson said. “People say, ‘How are you feeling?’ Like, I honestly don’t feel that different.”

Two summers ago, Roberson was Biles’ bouncy sidekick. Now she’s among the leaders of the next wave.

“I felt like more responsible to let the little, smaller, less experienced kids know it’s not the end of the day if you have a bad day or if you had one fall,” Roberson said. “I want to help them grow instead of think ‘I have to be perfect.'”

Roberson then walked the walk. Or maybe limped the limp. She appeared ready to make it a three-woman race for first until she turned an ankle on the final tumbling pass of her floor routine.

The rising sophomore at Arkansas gingerly continued on anyway. She gritted her way through her vault dismount, though the five-tenths (0.5) deduction for using an additional pad for her protection took her out of contention for the all-around.

Still, the victory hardly came easy for Rivera. She was pushed through four rotations by Wong, who started Sunday with a stuck Cheng vault and didn’t relent over the course of two hours.

Rivera responded each time – she posted the top scores on three of the four events – but it wasn’t until she walked off the podium following her floor routine with victory in hand that she could relax.

“Everything fell into place,” Rivera said. “I tried not to get too overwhelmed because nerves obviously can be there, especially when you know you’re in a spot to win a national title, but I just took all pressure off myself.”

Skye Blakely, who was injured at the Olympic Trials in both 2021 and 2024, was sublime on both uneven bars and balance beam to put herself in consideration to make the world team.