Jordan Chiles’ music wouldn’t start.
Despite attempts to play the track over the Yates Gym speakers at the John Wooden Center, the Billboard Top 100 hits that often serenade UCLA gymnastics floor routines failed to fill the room. The 23-year-old sprawled out on the floor like a snow angel in response. Minutes earlier, she strutted to her teammates’ choreography. She gazed at the gym’s mirror, adjusting the bun attached to her bob atop her head, readying her routine. And now, for a gymnast openly outspoken and energetic, there was silence.
Chiles didn’t need it.
The gold medalist and now two-time United States Olympian hit every note of her newly crafted choreography — her teammates strumming the tunes of her soundtrack in the absence of music — and effortlessly completed her acrobatic passes. Her care-free practice routine was a reminder that Chiles is back at UCLA — a return to college after missing 2024 to prepare for Olympics qualification — to have fun, enjoy gymnastics and win a national championship, she said.
“When it comes to college, you can play around,” Chiles said Tuesday, ahead of UCLA’s season-opening meet Saturday against California and Oregon State at the American Gold Women’s Collegiate Gymnastics Championships in Oceanside.
“It’s a stressful, mental game 100%, but if you’re dedicated to what you’re trying to do, then that can help you with what else may be happening — whether you’re going back for another [elite gymnastics] cycle or you’re coming back for your NCAA season.”
Chiles won team gold at the Paris Olympics but became embroiled in one of the biggest controversies of the Games when she was instructed to give up her individual floor exercise bronze medal to Romanian gymnast Ana Barbosu after a ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Her continuing fight to get back the medal, which includes an active appeal to the Swiss Supreme Court, has garnered support but has also subjected her to criticism and racial abuse online.
But spectators wouldn’t know it as Chiles practiced Tuesday.
“The thing I missed the most about not having [Chiles] here last year is the energy she brings to the room,” coach Janelle McDonald said. “She really inspires the people around her. … She has this really unique ability to not take gymnastics so seriously — or at least act like it, right?”
Jordan Chiles does her floor exercise routine during the “Meet The Bruins” event at Pauley Pavilion on Dec. 14.
(Katharine Lotze / Getty Images)
College Gym News ranked UCLA’s 2025 freshman class as eighth-best in the nation — a group that does not include sophomore Syndey Barros, a Puerto Rican gymnast and former U.S. national team member who missed 2024 recovering from a torn ACL she suffered attempting to qualify for the Olympics.
To help prepare the new Bruins, senior Emma Malabuyo — a 2024 Philippines Olympian — is filling a veteran role for the first time collegiately. Malabuyo competed in all four individual Olympic events and claimed 41st overall in all-around qualifying.
“I want them to know that you don’t have to be perfect right away,” Malabuyo said, referring to a freshman class that includes Macy McGowan and Mika Webster-Longin — gymnasts who McDonald said could eventually compete in the all-around. “I try to remind them, in the gym, [that] what matters to us most is that you show up every day and give 100%.”
Returning from the Olympics to college presents its challenges. On the elite stage, Chiles and Malabuyo toyed with their skills to create routines with the highest possible execution score — mostly on an individual stage.
In college — with scores capped at a 10 — routines are all about achieving perfection, with minimal, if any, deductions. Chiles owns eight perfect 10s (four each on floor and uneven bars), while Malabuyo earned her only 10 in a 2022 beam routine.
“I don’t like doing the same thing over and over again,” Chiles said. “Understanding that with elite, everything was very technical, you have to find the right execution, the right difficulty, all these things.”
Malabuyo added: “You have to be perfect, and you can’t really have those extra bobbles. … It’s more team-oriented, so you have to adjust mentally.”
When practice wrapped up Tuesday, with senior Emily Lee and graduate students Chae Campbell and Brooklyn Moors focusing on the small details before the team traveled to Oceanside on Thursday, Chiles asked to address the team after McDonald called a team huddle.
McDonald quipped that she never knows what Chiles is about to say, but she ceded the floor to the junior gymnast so she could speak. Her teammates shifted their eyeline to Chiles as her bubbly, sharp voice filled the huddle.
“To the freshmen: This week is supposed to be fun,” Chiles said. “I can feel the tenseness, don’t put too much stress on yourself. You have people all around you.”
Grasping the microphone, Chiles had one final statement to make:
“Don’t feel shy to bring your voices out.”