Hezly Rivera, already an Olympic gold medalist and a two-time U.S. all-around champion, is now headed to her first World Gymnastics Championships.
Rivera, plus Skye Blakely and Reese Esponda, were the last three gymnasts named to the five-woman U.S. team — which includes four making their worlds debut — for the championships from Oct. 17-25 in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
A committee picked the trio to join first-timers Claire Pease and Charleigh Bullock, who clinched spots as the top all-arounders combining scores from the Xfinity U.S. Championships in August and this week’s selection competition in Crossville, Tennessee.
This year’s worlds include the first team event at a global championship since the Paris Olympics, where Rivera, then 16, was the youngest U.S. athlete across all sports.
The 2025 Worlds included individual events only.
Though Rivera won the 2025 U.S. all-around title, she sprained an ankle shortly after, ruling her out of worlds contention.
Blakely, the 2024 U.S. all-around runner-up to Simone Biles, is going to her fourth consecutive worlds dating to 2022. She missed a chance at a first Olympics in 2024 after rupturing an Achilles two days before Olympic Trials.
Esponda, 17, is going to her first worlds. She beat out two-time Olympic gold medalist Jade Carey for a spot on the team. Both are strong on floor exercise and vault.
The U.S. women won the last seven team titles at worlds dating to 2011.
This year’s worlds see the return of women’s and men’s teams of gymnasts from Russia for the first time since the 2019 edition. Competing as a neutral team, gymnasts from Russia won the European women’s title in August.
Russia is the only team to beat the U.S. women at an Olympics or worlds in the last 15 years, doing so at the Tokyo Games in 2021.
In the individual all-around, the U.S. put at least one woman on the podium at every Olympics and worlds dating to 2003, but nobody on this year’s team has done so.
Rivera and Pease, Texas training partners who went one-two at nationals, plus Bullock, the youngest American on a world team in eight years, are the candidates to extend the streak.
