Jordan Childs smiles, the beam almost as bright as the green sweatshirt she’s wearing and the Olympic ring dangling from a necklace at the base of her neck. This is not necessarily a departure. Effervescence tends to be the default chile position.
In addition to smiles, those presented to the audience either as a mask or as an indulgence of politeness, and there are smiles. This one, which bounces off Chile’s face for a full 25 minutes after a video call, is accompanied by eyes that squint and hands that move a mile a minute and cheeks that rise towards her ears. This is the genuine artifact.
The timing of this particular burst of joy is ironic. This weekend, she was supposed to return to competition for the first time since the Pan American Games in October, but had to withdraw from the Winter Cup in Louisville, Ky., due to a shoulder injury. It’s less than ideal, four months away from the U.S. Olympic Trials and five months from the Paris Olympics, but Chiles shrugs it off, promising it won’t cause her much trouble.
At 22, she is, as she aptly describes, new in the eyes of the world but ancient in the insular world of gymnastics. Her body has been battered and restored, her spirit treated the same by the sport she has alternately loved and loathed in equal measure. But she has emerged on the other side as more than just an athlete. she has come into her own.
“My motto these last couple of months has been, ‘I’m that girl,'” says Chiles. “I have nothing to prove to anyone. It’s for myself. I have nothing to prove, but I believe I have more to give.”
Chiles will be the first to admit that she doesn’t have it all figured out. He doesn’t want all the answers. The vagueness of the possibility—of what her life might look like someday, when gymnastics isn’t the focus—makes her start riffing like a toddler on career day. How she could be anything she wants — a nurse, an architect — or do anything she wants. Maybe he’ll play an instrument one day. She shares her hopes of getting into real estate and using it to help people out of difficult circumstances. she envisions a future where she will get married, have children, become a grandmother. Seconds later it expands into a dream in which he takes a world that everyone says is flawed and instead finds a way to make it better.
It’s exactly how you’d expect him to talk as he embraces new adulthood, mixes simple goals and high hopes, and tries to figure out where exactly it all fits. For much of her life, however, Chiles could not afford to think about such normalcy. Her life was gymnastics.
“Gym, home, school,” he jokes. “There was so much I could see.”
At some point, though, what once brought her joy—scrambling and bouncing in the gym—brought her only agony. Chile refers to her early relationship with the sport as being stuck in a black box – “Only walls, no light”. She has spoken in the past about a coach, whom she chose not to name, who subjected her to the kind of emotional and verbal torture that young girls like Chili were once thought to have to endure. Belittled for not being the perfect pixie, she lost more than her confidence.
“I lost my voice,” she says.
She rediscovered it with the help of Simone Biles, who suggested Chiles relocate and train with her in Texas. This move, in 2019, saved Chile’s career and restored its joy, but it did not take away the uniqueness of the focus. True to her Olympic dream, Chiles, left out of the world championship team three years in a row, put her all into that goal. The COVID-19 pandemic, which has pushed the 2020 Tokyo Olympics back a year, has revamped its schedule but not its intent.
“I was the underdog,” he says. “Everybody said, ‘Can he make the team?’ You can’t help but put those thoughts in your head too.”
Jordan Chiles watches Simon Biles in the team final at the Tokyo Olympics. “I was the underdog,” Chiles says of that Olympic cycle. (Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)
She did, finishing third at the US trials in the summer of 2021, behind Biles and Suni Lee, and essentially training to near perfection. For an entire season heading into the Tokyo Games, she was the only athlete to land every routine in the four major domestic events — 24-for-24.
That the mistakes were made with the whole world watching seemed incredibly cruel. Chiles faltered in her beam and bars routines, failing to advance to an individual event final. But when Biles retired on the twisties, Chiles, who had planned to compete only on floor and vault in the team finals, was pressed into service in the other events.
In the team final, he passed with better scores. The performance was capped off by helping Team USA to the silver medal. A year later, she finally earned her spot at the world championships, helping the United States win a gold medal in Liverpool.
Chiles then went out and had a life. She signed with a marketing agency, landed endorsements with Urban Outfitters and Pottery Barn Teen, worked on her clothing line, bought her parents a house and herself a car and, after deferring for two years, finally enrolled at UCLA. She went to class, made friends, and tried to be as normal as a world-famous Olympian on a college campus. She also played with her routines, welcoming the shift toward team success that NCAA gymnastics allows. In 2023, she won NCAA titles on bars and floor and finished second in the all-around.
The irony is that female gymnasts compete the most – there are meets almost every weekend – and yet as the demands increased, Chiles made a happy discovery. Her life was not meant to be either.
“My sport and my life can be separate,” he says. “I can have fun inside my sport and outside of it. It shouldn’t all be about my sport.”
This, of course, becomes a much more difficult pursuit when the dangling carrot is a spot on the Olympic team. For now, it’s all about the sport, and Chile’s epiphany should not be misconstrued as a lack of emphasis on competitiveness. Once her shoulder injury is on the mend, she has every intention of approaching her training with the same zest she always has and setting the same standards of excellence. That, says Chiles, should be clear.
“I didn’t come back to put on a face,” he says. “I came back because I have more to give.”
At various times in her career, Chiles carried the torch as a black woman and strong athlete in a sport that lacked color and favored flexibility. She has fought as an underdog to quiet naysayers and find her place on Team USA. And on the biggest stage of gymnastics, she has overcome her mistakes to provide what her team needed.
He is an Olympian. She is a world champion. She is a daughter, teammate, friend.
And it’s just getting started.
“I’m ready to go for the next six months with everything I’ve got,” she says. “And I know it’s going to be great no matter what because this time I’m going to do it for myself.”
In it, Jordan Chiles smiles.
Jordan Chiles competes on the balance beam during the team final at the Tokyo Olympics. The withdrawal of Simone Biles forced Chile into an additional task. (Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)
GO DEEPER
How Simone Biles is back for another shot at the Olympics
(Top photo from November Team USA shoot: Harry How/Getty Images)
