Hezly Rivera was the fresh face a year ago. 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.”
It looks like that confidence has paid off. 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 US 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 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 US 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 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’ sidekick. Now she’s among the leaders of the next wave.
“I felt like more responsible to let the little, smaller, less…
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