PHOENIX — After Shilese Jones did a meet and greet at the USA Gymnastics national congress and trade show, she sat down and was asked what the last two years have been like.
Jones started with June 28, 2024, the first day of the Olympic Trials for the Paris Games.
Jones, a World Championships all-around silver and bronze medalist in 2022 and 2023, hoped to make her first Olympic team. She was set to return to competition at trials after missing the U.S. Championships four weeks earlier with a right shoulder injury.
But in warm-ups, minutes before trials began, she injured her left knee on a vault landing.
“It all happened so fast, right?” she said Saturday after her booth appearance for gymnastics apparel company Sylvia P. “That last touch right before competing, it all was wild. I’m over here doing a Kerri Strug moment, pretty much. I knew something was incredibly wrong, right? But I was like, ‘I’m still going to give it all I got.’”
Jones scratched vault, but still competed on the uneven bars. She posted the night’s top score on that event before deeming it unsafe to continue.
She then got the knee checked out. Her first question: Can I still compete?
“They looked at me crazy, so that was a little wild,” she remembered. “It was like, no, you need to be serious. And I was like, OK, that’s when I knew.”
The diagnosis: a torn ACL and meniscus. She had to wait a month and a half for the swelling to subside enough to undergo her first of two knee surgeries. The second one was in early 2025.
“Hearing it out of my own surgeon’s mouth, too, of how much of the damage that was done was crazy,” Jones said. “Honestly, I didn’t even know all of that could be done off of a landing.”
While sidelined, she also underwent surgery in 2025 to repair a torn rotator cuff in that right shoulder that she had competed through since 2022.
“This is the first break I’ve had since I’ve started gymnastics at four, (and at) six years old when I started competing,” said Jones, who is 24.
Shilese Jones’ Instagram
Which brings her to now, two years out from the Los Angeles Olympics. Jones’ shoulder feels great, her knee is “getting there” and she’s balancing workouts with coaching younger gymnasts at Ascend Gymnastics outside Seattle.
“Still trying to work on some (knee) range of movement stuff,” she said. “But I’m most happy with my shoulder right now. I’d been feeling it since 2022. So to be on the bar, pain free, has been excellent for me. I feel like a whole different girl up there.”
As Jones said in disclosing her knee diagnosis in July 2024, her eyes are on the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
“I’m really enjoying my break right now and trying to stay strong,” she said. “But that will be my goal and will remain that goal until, obviously, it’s in my hands.”
Another goal: to return to competition next summer.
“I don’t want to go through another cycle where I’m in pain, right, and having to have those ifs and worries,” she said. “Obviously, there’s injuries that come along with the sport, but I want to know that I feel 100% healthy, motivated, safe and confident going into my skills. So that’s kind of where I’m at now.”
She has stayed deeply involved in the sport, expanding her coaching during her break. She attends meets for her gymnasts at development levels and teaches them skills at Ascend from “sunrise to sundown.”
“I love helping, developing, seeing the kids smile, right?” she said. “It’s everything I loved when I grew up.”
Jones watched the Xfinity U.S. Championships women’s competition on Friday night, and plans to do so again Sunday (6 p.m. ET, NBC and Peacock).
She has been moved by Skye Blakely, the co-leader after night one in her first elite all-around competition in two years.
Like Jones, Blakely was a favorite to make the Paris Olympic team before injury struck. She ruptured her right Achilles’ tendon while training on floor exercise, two days before the 2024 Olympic Trials.
“No one really sees the behind the scenes, but when she went down, I actually was in tears,” Jones said. “We had to go to practice, and I was like, I don’t know how I’m going to continue to practice. I’ve seen that kid work so hard and through so many battles and injuries, so I just really felt something in my soul, right?
“To see her in her element and see her shine and truly still have some type of smile and leadership is awesome.”
They aren’t the only comeback stories as LA approaches.
Two-time Olympic gold medalist Jade Carey, who thought she was done after Paris, returned this season.
Suni Lee, the Tokyo Olympic all-around gold medalist, is back in the gym and expected to compete again in 2027. Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles, also on elite breaks since Paris, haven’t announced if they’ll join in.
While the pull of a home Olympics can be strong for any of them, Jones is motivated by internal drive.
“I’ve battled through so much, and there’s been so many injuries,” she said. “The story still continues. I just want to prove myself.”
This past June 28 — two years after her injury — Jones posted about that day at Olympic Trials and the ensuing months of setbacks, pain and now steps forward.
“Some days change your life forever,” she wrote. “This was one of them. And I’m proud of the person I’ve become because I refused to let it be the end.”
