Four members of the Fierce Five are now in California. The fifth is on the East Coast, training to perhaps join her teammates on a U.S. team down the road.
U.S. Olympic gymnastics team captain Aly Raisman has returned to training, as confirmed by the Boston Globe.
Raisman had tweeted in June that she was back.
“It took me a long time, but one morning I woke up and said, I’m ready to come back,” she told the newspaper. “Now that I’m back, I feel like a little kid again.”
Raisman is back with her old coach, Mihai Brestyan, in her old gym in Burlington, Mass., after a busy year off. She made the finals of “Dancing with the Stars,” threw out a first pitch at a Red Sox game and was drug tested at “Access Hollywood.”
In addition to team gold, Raisman won gold on floor exercise, bronze on balance beam and missed out on bronze in the all-around by a tiebreaker in London. The newspaper reported Raisman could train with an eye on the all-around in 2016.
Of course, Raisman will not be competing this season. The U.S. named its team for the World Championships on Sunday.
Raisman, 19, was the oldest member of the U.S. Olympic champion team in London. Therefore it would seem she faces the toughest odds of making the 2016 Olympic team out of the five, especially because she took the longest post-Olympic break.
Gabby Douglas returned to her Iowa gym in May and is now training without a coach in California.
Jordyn Wieber was training in Michigan earlier this year but did not compete this season. She’s about to start her freshman year at UCLA and possibly be a manager with the school’s gymnastics team. Wieber can’t compete collegiately because she turned pro.
McKayla Maroney and Kyla Ross are on the team for worlds in Antwerp, Belgium, next month.
No U.S. woman has made back-to-back Olympic teams since 2000. Five of the six from 2008 made attempts and were unsuccessful.
“I feel like I’ve already done it,” Raisman told the newspaper. “So if it doesn’t go my way, at least I’ve done what I always wanted to do.”
Here’s video from last month’s U.S. Championships, where Raisman and Douglas talked a little about 2016:
