Jade Carey caps ‘redemption’ at Paris Olympics with bronze in star-studded vault final

PARIS — Jade Carey couldn’t help but smile, knowing she turned in close to her best two runs possible for Saturday night’s Olympic vault final at Paris’ Bercy Arena.

The Oregon State gymnast used some of the most complex twist and turn combos in her arsenal and nearly aced them en route to impressive scores of 14.73 and 14.2.

Her only problem was U.S. teammate Simone Biles and Brazilian great Rebeca Andrade also nailed their respective vaults. If it were any other night or any other competition, Carey might have had an outside shot at her third Olympic gold medal. Instead, she was ecstatic with bronze on Saturday, earning a spot on the podium alongside two of the best female gymnasts the sport has ever seen.

“I was really proud of how I competed,” said Carey, donning the third-place medal around her neck, over a blue Team USA warm-up jacket. “I’ve been anticipating this day for a really long time and it was one of my biggest motivators to be here today.”

Biles earned a gymnastics-record seventh gold medal with vault scores of 15.7 and 14.9, and Andrade silver with 15.1 and 14.8 tallies. To put that into more relatable terms for the everyday sports fan, a score above 16 is the women’s gymnastics equivalent of a pitcher throwing a no-hitter. Anything above 16.5 is like tossing a perfect game.

For the 24-year-old Carey, medaling offered “redemption” in the vault — one of her two strongest individual events — after an eighth-place finish in the Tokyo Olympics three years ago. She was considered a medal favorite with Biles missing that event, but stumbled out of bounds while trying to land her second vault. Each gymnast performs two vaults in the Olympic event, and their final score is an average of the two.

Even though Carey won a gold medal in the floor exercise that year, then earned another gold on Tuesday via a 14.8 vault score for the U.S. women in the team event, she said Saturday that she badly wanted to avenge the “embarrassing” individual vault score from Tokyo.

“I wanted to prove that I could put two vaults together and walk away with a medal,” she explained. “This medal means everything to me.”

It almost didn’t happen, though. Just a couple days after arriving in Paris, Carey came down with flu-like symptoms that put her entire Olympics in jeopardy. When the U.S. women took the floor for their qualifying rounds last Sunday, Carey hadn’t been able to stomach any food in more than three days.

It showed in her floor routine. The reigning Olympic champion failed to qualify for a chance to defend her gold medal after stepping out of bounds after one maneuver, then nearly tumbling off the mat on another. Carey’s 10.66 score on the floor was by far her lowest ever on the international stage and essentially turned her into a glorified vault specialist for Paris.

As she slowly began to eat small meals again during the week, she convinced U.S. coaches Cecile and Laurent Landi that she was healthy enough to vault for the team event. But she was left out of the team floor event, with the Landis opting instead to enter Biles, Sunisa Lee, and Vancouver’s Jordan Chiles.

Asked on Saturday if she was feeling back to 100%, Carey smiled.

“I wouldn’t go with that, it’s still hard for me to eat,” she said. “But I’m doing a lot better.”

Even those who watch Carey on a daily basis said she showed no signs of rust at Saturday’s vault final, where she was the last of eight women to perform.

Wearing an all-blue leotard with sparkling white stars, she hopped into a long stride for her first vault, as the 18,500-capacity crowd of mostly American, Brazilian, Canadian and French fans watched in respectful silence. She landed with a slight hop, but still earned the high 14.73 score due to the vault’s advanced degree of difficulty. It earned the second-loudest ovation of the day, after Biles.

Needing 13.73 points to knock North Korea’s An Chang-ok from the third spot, Carey delivered another solid, slightly less difficult vault that was nearly perfect, minus a negligible misstep on the landing. She smiled from what seemed like the moment she lifted her hands in triumph on the second vault landing to when she left Bercy Arena on Saturday.

“Jade was incredible today and she deserves every bit of the success she’s having and the joy she’s feeling,” Biles said. “She was so well-prepared, so I wasn’t surprised she still performed amazing even after all she’s been dealing with this week.”

Brian Carey, Jade’s father and longtime coach at both Oregon State and the U.S. Olympic team, echoed Biles’ sentiment, saying his daughter “put in the work” to thrive despite her illness.

“She’s been training and ramping up for months,” he said. “She trusted the numbers and trusted her training, she knew she was going to be OK.

“It was amazing today,” Brian Carey added, “and I’m so proud of her.”

— Chris Kudialis for The Oregonian/OregonLive