Who Is Jade Carey? Meet 2024 Paris Olympics Secret Weapon for Team USA Gymnastics

Jade Carey is a proud member of the 2024 Team USA Olympics gymnastics squad after getting her big break at the 2020 Tokyo Games. Fans want to know more about the athlete, including where she’s from and how long she’s been competing.

Jade Has Been in Gymnastics Since Childhood

“I believe she was about 4 years old; her dad and I were watching TV, and all of a sudden, oop, there goes a cartwheel,” Jade’s mother, Danielle Mitchell-Greenberg, revealed on the Today show in June 2021. “We looked at each other, and I said, ‘Did you teach her that?’ and he said, ‘No, did you?’ and I said, ‘No,’ and so I think we kind of knew at that point.”

However, it wasn’t until she was a teenager that Jade understood she could make her hobby her full-time job. “I feel like I didn’t really understand until I was a little bit older — probably, like, 15 or 16 — that this is something that I could really do,” she told Us Weekly in April 2021.

In 2017, she began her senior career. At age 17, she was awarded the gold medal in vault and silver medal in floor exercise at the U.S. National Gymnastics Championships that year.

Jade made the 2020 Olympic team but only as an apparatus competitor.

Jade Carey Is a College Athlete

After deferring going to college at Oregon State University to compete in the Tokyo Olympics, she started her freshmen semester in the fall of 2021. Jade also competes on the school’s gymnastics team.

Who Is Jade Carey’s Coach?

The athlete has been coached by her dad, Brian Carey, since she was a preteen.

“I knew when she was young she had a gift. I didn’t want to push it, definitely didn’t want to push it for me,” Brian told the Corvallis Gazette-Times in a 2024 interview. “I wanted her to hopefully fall in love with the sport, which she did. I just thought it would be too much when she was little to be coaching her all the time. So, I would just clap and ask her how her day was and if she had fun. That was about it.”

Jade’s father continued to coach her in college, joining the coaching staff at Oregon State University in 2023.

Jade Carey Replaced Simone Biles on the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Gymnastics Team

The Phoenix, Arizona, native catapulted to worldwide attention when Simone Biles was forced to withdraw from the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo due to mental health concerns as well as developing a case of the “twisties.” That’s when a gymnast loses awareness while they are in mid-air, making it incredibly difficult to land safely.

After Simone bowed out on July 27, 2021, individual competitor Jade filled her spot on Team USA as their fourth teammate for the remainder of the competition.

Although Jade faltered in the vault competition, which is her specialty, she redeemed herself by taking home the gold medal in the floor exercise final.

Jade Carey Battled a Mystery Illness at the 2024 Paris Olympics

Jade qualified for Team USA at the Olympic trials in June 2024, allowing her to compete on the all-round team as well as apparatus events.

Unfortunately, the defending gold medalist in the floor exercise landed several of her jumping sequences out of bounds during the qualifiers on July 28, 2024. Her final leap even ended in a fall at the corner of the mat. The lower scores knocked Jade out of competing in the event’s individual competition as a result, although she will still compete in the vault.

Jade dispelled rumors that nerves were getting the better of her, telling Olympics.com, “I just have not been feeling well the past few days and haven’t been able to eat or anything. 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.”

In an Instagram post next to photos from her floor routine, Jade wrote, “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.”

Jade Carey Wins Big With Gold in Women’s Team All-Around

Despite feeling under the weather, Jade competed in the vault during the women’s team all-around final on July 30, 2024. She placed second in the vault with a score of 14.800, just behind teammate Simone’s 14.900. The ladies took home the gold medal, which was Jade’s first team gold.

What Other Events Will Jade Carey Compete in at the 2024 Paris Olympics?

Despite not being able to defend her individual all-round floor title, Jade will compete in the individual vault finals for Team USA on Saturday, August 3, 2024.