Jordan Chiles announced her return to gymnastics on Wednesday, setting her sights on a run at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics — a Games that will mark the first time the Summer Olympics have been held on U.S. soil since Atlanta hosted in 1996. The two-time Olympic gymnast will pursue her comeback while based right here in Los Angeles, training at UCLA, the school where she just wrapped up a decorated collegiate career.
Chiles' announcement, first reported by The Athletic, comes as UCLA has confirmed she'll return to the program not as a competitor but as a student coach for the Bruins' 2027 season. According to Gymnastics Now, the arrangement lets Chiles stay in Los Angeles and train at UCLA's facilities rather than heading back to a former club in Texas or relocating to Georgia, giving her a built-in base as she prepares for the Olympic host city.
The plan, as outlined by Forbes, has Chiles targeting a formal return to elite competition in 2027, when she'll try to earn a spot on that year's World Championship team before entering the 2028 Olympic trials cycle. It's a deliberate, staged comeback — one year coaching, the next year competing, all building toward trials for the Los Angeles Games.
A Career Built on Perfect 10s
Chiles' decision to step away from competition this past year wasn't a retirement — it was a chance to close out an already stacked résumé at UCLA. She won the AAI Award in April as the nation's most outstanding senior female gymnast, capping a collegiate career that included 19 career perfect 10s and 131 individual event victories, per UCLA Athletics. She finished her final season ranked in the national top five in all four individual events and the all-around.
Before UCLA, Chiles already had an Olympic résumé most gymnasts only dream of. She won silver with the U.S. women's team at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, then gold with the team again at the 2024 Paris Olympics, according to the seed reporting. She also took bronze on floor in Paris — a medal now at the center of a long, unresolved legal fight.
The Paris Bronze Medal Fight Isn't Over
That floor bronze remains in limbo. The IOC reallocated the medal to Romania's Ana Bărbosu in August 2024 after a scoring inquiry dispute, and Chiles appealed the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, whose ruling against her she then challenged further. In January, the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland granted her appeal, setting aside the CAS ruling and ordering a new arbitration proceeding, according to Gibson Dunn. The Swiss court determined that video evidence showing her coach's scoring inquiry had been filed on time was conclusive and had been unjustly left out of the original arbitration.
The case remains pending before the Court of Arbitration for Sport, per the seed reporting, meaning the medal question is still unresolved even as Chiles moves forward with her comeback. The original bronze-medal moment carried weight beyond the podium: it created the first all-Black podium in Olympic gymnastics history, alongside gold medalist Rebeca Andrade of Brazil and silver medalist Simone Biles, as noted by Harvard Law School. Hoodline previously covered the legal battle in a timing dispute over her medal, when her future Olympic plans were still uncertain.
Joining a Wave of Returning Teammates
Chiles isn't the only member of that gold-medal Paris team eyeing a return. She's the fourth of the five 2024 champions to formally declare an LA28 comeback, joining Suni Lee, Jade Carey and Hezly Rivera, which leaves Simone Biles as the only member of the squad who hasn't announced her plans, according to the Los Angeles Times. Carey already returned to elite competition in June, and Rivera recently won her second national championship.
Should Chiles qualify for the 2028 team, she would become just the fifth U.S. female gymnast in history to compete in three Olympic Games, joining Biles, Dominique Dawes, Linda Metheny and Muriel Grossfield — a list that underscores how rare multi-Olympic runs remain in the sport. The Times frames her push toward the Games at age 27 as part of a broader shift in women's gymnastics, where NCAA competition and NIL opportunities now let athletes sustain elite careers well into their mid-to-late 20s instead of retiring in their teens.
A Personal, Star-Studded Announcement
Chiles made her announcement with a flourish. Her comeback video was narrated by NBA legend Michael Jordan — the man she was named after — and featured appearances from singer Normani and model Winnie Harlow, according to NBC Sports. Normani's music has previously been featured in Chiles' floor routines, and the video closed with Chiles revealing custom LA 2028 grills.
Chiles' connection to Michael Jordan runs deeper than her name. Per the seed reporting, she owns more than 100 pairs of Jordan shoes and received encouragement from him before the Paris Games. In the video, Jordan is quoted telling her there's still more to give, to which Chiles simply replied, why not? USA Gymnastics welcomed her back, according to the organization.
With her collegiate career closed, her coaching debut ahead, and her Paris bronze medal case still pending before CAS, Chiles now enters a two-year stretch that will decide whether she gets to compete for a medal in the city where she trains — with the venue for artistic gymnastics at the 2028 Games set for Crypto.com Arena in Downtown Los Angeles.
