ROTTERDAM, Netherlands
The United States women will begin qualifying at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships on Sunday without the one gymnast on their roster who had done this under Olympic pressure before. Hezly Rivera, the 18-year-old Paris Olympic gold medalist, medically withdrew from the championships in Rotterdam on Saturday, Oct. 17, one day before American qualifying, because of a left ankle injury, according to USA Today and NBC Sports.
The timing leaves little room for a workaround, and USA Gymnastics did not pretend otherwise. In a post shared by the federation and noted by International Gymnast Magazine, USA Gymnastics said: “We're wishing Hezly a speedy recovery & know she'll be cheering on Team USA in Rotterdam.” — USA Gymnastics, in its post. Rivera will stay a presence around the team in spirit, but she will not be on the competition floor at Rotterdam Ahoy, and for a program that has built its recent dominance around depth, this is the kind of absence that tests exactly that claim.
Day to day, then out
The withdrawal did not come without warning. Rivera told reporters on Thursday, Oct. 15, that she was “day to day,” Rivera told reporters, according to USA Today, while she dealt with pain in her left ankle during training. Gymnastics Now reported that she was limited in podium training, with her ankle heavily wrapped, that she skipped vault and that she marked through her floor exercise rather than tumbling it at full difficulty. Those are not the signs of a gymnast holding something back for qualifying. They are the signs of a gymnast and a medical staff trying to find out whether there was a safe version of competing at all.
Rivera described the approach herself in comments reported by EssentiallySports from USA Gymnastics coverage: “Yeah, so I am having some ankle pain in my left ankle, so I just wanted to modify my training so I can properly heal.” — Rivera, as reported by EssentiallySports. By Saturday, modifying training was no longer enough. The medical withdrawal, reported by both USA Today and NBC Sports, closed the question before qualifying began, rather than risking a mid-competition exit or a worse injury on a landing in Rotterdam.
There is a painful familiarity to the sequence. NBC Sports and Gymnastics Now both noted that Rivera sprained the same ankle shortly after the 2025 U.S. Championships, an injury that took her out of the 2025 World Championships. This is therefore the second straight year in which injury has kept her out of worlds — a cruel pattern for the two-time defending U.S. all-around champion, who won those national titles in 2025 and 2026, according to NBC Sports, and arrived in the Netherlands as the clear veteran anchor of a very young team.
Caylor steps in, Carey stays home
Alternate Dulcy Caylor replaces Rivera on the five-woman team, a move reported across USA Today, NBC Sports and Gymnastics Now. Caylor was already in Rotterdam as the traveling alternate, which matters in a sport where qualifying lineups have to be set and rehearsed, not improvised from an airport. Gymnastics Now reported, confirmed by USA Gymnastics, that non-traveling alternate Jade Carey will not be flown in. Carey, an experienced Olympian in her own right, might on paper have looked like an obvious emergency call, but federations name traveling and non-traveling alternates for a reason, and the United States stuck to that structure rather than upending it on the eve of qualifying.
That decision also underlines what this team now is. Rivera was the lone Olympian on the original five-woman U.S. team, according to NBC Sports. With her out, this becomes the first U.S. worlds team roster with no gymnast holding prior Olympic experience since the 2011 roster — the very roster, NBC Sports noted, that started the Americans' current run of world team titles. In Paris, Rivera was the youngest U.S. athlete across all sports at those Olympics, according to NBC Sports, a detail that once made her the future of the program. In Rotterdam, at 18, she was supposed to be its present as well: the champion who had been there, leading gymnasts who had not. Instead, that leadership will have to be shared, quickly, among gymnasts making their own first impressions on a worlds stage.
What qualifying looks like now
The immediate task is concrete, not sentimental. The U.S. women compete in qualifying on Sunday at 10 a.m. ET, according to NBC Sports. USA Today reported the planned all-around lineup as Skye Blakely, Charleigh Bullock and Claire Pease — three gymnasts who will now carry the all-around responsibility that Rivera was expected to headline. Caylor, stepping in from the alternate role, is set for balance beam only in qualifying, according to USA Today, while Reese Esponda is also in the lineups, on floor exercise, vault and uneven bars.
That distribution tells its own story. Beam only for Caylor is a contained, high-trust assignment: beam is the apparatus where a single wobble can reshape a team score, and asking a late replacement to do one job exceptionally well is smarter than asking her to replicate Rivera's full program. Esponda's three-apparatus role, meanwhile, gives the United States coverage without overloading any one gymnast, and the Blakely-Bullock-Pease all-around trio will determine both the team's qualifying position and who remains in reach of Friday's all-around final. Qualifying in gymnastics is not a formality for the Americans, even with their history. Scores set the team final field, the all-around final field and every event final, and a shaky Sunday can narrow a whole week's options.
Fans following the full championships can keep up with the week's results in our sports coverage, where the team finals and the road to the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics are tracked across sports.
Seven straight titles, and a longer podium streak
The stakes in Rotterdam extend well beyond one qualifying session. The U.S. women have won the last seven world team titles dating to 2011 and are chasing an eighth straight, according to NBC Sports. Just as striking, at least one U.S. woman has made the all-around podium at every Olympics and world championships since 2003 — 23 straight global championships, NBC Sports reported. Streaks like those do not survive on reputation. They survive because, year after year, someone new has been ready when a star was missing, hurt or retired, and Rotterdam now asks this young roster to become the next proof of that system rather than an exception to it.
The schedule ahead is unforgiving and fast. After qualifying, the women's team final is Wednesday, the all-around final is Friday, and the event finals follow next Saturday and Sunday, according to NBC Sports. There is no extra day built in for a team to mourn a withdrawal or rebuild its identity at leisure. Whatever the United States is going to be at these championships, it will have to become it in public, rotation by rotation, starting Sunday morning U.S. time.
The men have already set the bar — and the cautionary tale
The American men, whose qualifying is already complete, offer both context and warning. USA Today reported in its live coverage that the U.S. men finished fifth in qualifying behind Japan, Britain, Russia and China. Their team final is Tuesday, Oct. 20. Fred Richard and Danila Leykin made the all-around final, Richard also reached the floor final and Patrick Hoopes reached the pommel horse final, according to USA Today. The top three countries in the team final qualify for the LA28 Olympics, a reminder that these championships are not only about medals this week — they are the first direct team qualifying opportunity for the Los Angeles Games, and every finalist knows it.
For the women, that LA28 framing makes Rivera's absence feel both immediate and longer-term. Nobody is writing off an 18-year-old champion because of an ankle injury in October 2026, least of all a gymnast who has already come back from spraining the same ankle a year ago. But the road to a home Olympics runs through exactly these championships, these qualifying lineups and these chances to prove reliability under pressure. Rivera will have to heal, again, while her teammates try to keep the streaks she was brought here to extend.
On Sunday, at 10 a.m. ET, Blakely, Bullock, Pease, Caylor and Esponda walk into Rotterdam Ahoy as a team with no Olympian on the floor for the first time at a worlds since 2011. History says the program finds a way. This roster now has to say it for itself.
