Think you can build a gold-medal U.S. gymnastics team? Try it. (2024)

Selecting an Olympic gymnastics team is a complicated puzzle — especially for the U.S. women, who are the favorites to win gold in Paris and have a deep pool of experienced contenders. Among the gymnasts vying for spots are three past Olympic all-around champions, two other Olympic medalists and several more gymnasts who have competed at world championships.

Team

When the U.S. selection committee names the Olympic team on June 30 — taking into consideration each gymnast’s recent scores and her potential — it will be a difficult decision with life-changing implications.

For you, though? The stakes are low. And while the choices are hard, we’ll make it easier by helping you experiment with building your own roster. When you’re done, we’ll tell you how well your team would score.

The top finisher at the Olympic trials in late June will automatically earn a spot on the team. The selection committee chooses the other four members based on discretionary criteria laid out in its procedures, which include results from “tryout events” — which are international meets since last fall and the major competitions this year — plus a gymnast’s consistency and the overall strength of the team.

It’s reasonable to assume that scores earned closer to the Olympics, especially at the trials, will carry more weight than others. In general, scores above a 14.000 are ones that would boost the U.S. team on any apparatus.

But unless you’re secretly a committee member, you can build your team however you want. (Again: Stakes = low.)

First, how do you want to analyze scores?

Do you want to see each gymnast’s best marks from the tryout events? Or would you rather see a score that represents each gymnast’s overall performance since the beginning of 2023? We determined that score by identifying the 75th percentile mark across all competitions, as long as the gymnast had competed at least five times on an apparatus. That score should reflect a strong performance for a gymnast while ensuring a single high mark isn’t skewing the result.

You can keep coming back to build new teams as the gymnasts progress through their seasons. There are still three major competitions to go: the U.S. Classic (May 18), the national championships (May 31 and June 2) and the Olympic trials (June 28 and 30). After each competition, we will update these scores.

Which gymnasts would you pick for the Olympic team?