KC’s Leanne Wong, Kara Eaker move closer to Tokyo after qualifying for Olympic Trials
While all eyes were on Simone Biles, who won her seventh national title Sunday, Leanne Wong concluded a weekend of solid performances with a fifth-place finish at the 2021 U.S. Gymnastics Championships in Fort Worth.
Gage Gymnastics teammate and recent Grain Valley High graduate Kara Eaker, in sixth place after day one, placed 10th with 109.050 points and joined Wong in qualifying for the June 24-27 U.S. Olympic Trials in St. Louis. Gage teammate Aleah Finnegan missed qualifying with a 23rd-place finish.
Wong, who recently graduated from Blue Valley High and like Eaker and Finnegan trains at Blue Springs-based Gage, finished with an all-around score of 110.150, just 4.8 points away from second place. A top-two finish in St. Louis automatically earns a spot in the Tokyo Summer Games.
“It gives me a lot of confidence, just knowing that I’m up there with the top, but I know that I can do a lot better,” Wong said.
Wong and Eaker had their eyes on Tokyo last year before the Olympics were delayed until this summer because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Wong said the extra year of training made a difference for her.
“(It) was helpful just to improve even more on my skill level and execution difficulty,” she said. “So just getting back out there in front of the big crowd and competing for the first time was just really exciting.”
The University of Florida-bound Wong was in second place in the floor exercise after day one, just four-tenths of a point behind Biles. The floor routine was Wong’s strongest event of the weekend — she finishing third after the second day. Vault was her other strength — she was fifth — but she placed 10th in the beam and 15th on the uneven bars.
Eaker, who finished fifth in beam and will attend the University of Utah this fall, said it was a relief to qualify for the Olympic Trials.
“I was really nervous at first. I just really wanted to make it,” she said. “Now it’s like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders-kind of thing — I was really relieved.”
The beam is Eaker’s best chance of making it to Tokyo in an individual spot. And after a shaky day one performance that nearly started with a fall, Eaker performed nearly flawlessly day two. NBC Sports analyst and former Olympic medalist Nastia Liukin said Eaker’s strong performance Sunday almost makes one forget she’s on the balance beam and not the floor.
Eaker said the key in turning around her beam performances was going back to the basics and refocusing on what she’s been practicing.
“I really enjoy being able to go to St. Louis and stay in my home state,” she said. “We’re really just focusing right now on perfection and improving the quality of our work.”
Biles was unsurprisingly crowned for the seventh time as a national champion on Sunday. It’s the most national titles for any woman in history. Sunisa Lee finished second, with Jordan Chiles right behind in third by half a point.
Four gymnasts will be selected for the Olympic team at the end of the month, with the top two finishers at the trials automatically securing their spots in Tokyo. The other two will be selected by the sport’s U.S. committee. One of two individual spots is still open, with Jade Carey confirmed to fill the other. Several alternates will be named, as well, in case of injuries or a team member testing positive for COVID-19.
National team coordinate Tom Forster said the priority in selecting which gymnast will fill the final individual spot will be to provide the most opportunities for athletes to win medals for themselves and the U.S. The person chosen won’t necessarily be the strongest all-around gymnast.
“We believe that we’re going to have our strongest all-arounders actually on the team,” Forster said. “Since the rules only allowed two athletes per country to go into the finals, we think the (individual) doesn’t need to be as strong all-arounder, because they probably would not have a shot of getting past even the (other) Americans.”
This story was originally published June 6, 2021 at 10:56 PM.