U.S. gymnastics Olympics hopeful Skye Blakely suffered an apparent leg injury during training in Minneapolis on Wednesday.
While practicing a floor exercise, Blakely “landed short on a tumbling pass”, and had to be helped off the floor, ultimately leaving in a wheelchair, according to the Washington Post.
USA Today reported that Blakely was “sobbing”, and that US gymnastics official Chellsie Memmel approached her coaches and embraced them.
There has not been an immediate update on Blakely’s status for the Olympic trials, which start Friday.
Blakely, 19, had been a favorite to make the five-woman team, which gets finalized Sunday.
This is a potentially devastating development for Blakely, who also suffered an injury three years ago warming up for the Olympic trials to earn a spot on the team for Tokyo.
Blakely finished second to Simone Biles in the all-around at the U.S. championships earlier in June, and was part of the U.S. teams that won gold at the world championships last year and in 2022.
Katherine Johnson Clarke, who won silver and bronze medals in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and is a former commentator for ESPN and ABC, expressed her sympathies to Blakely.
“Stop the world, I want to get off. My heart, broken as it is into a million pieces, goes out to Skye and her family,” Clarke wrote on X.
“It goes out to our entire extended gymnastics family, as we all feel this pain so intensely and deeply. Damn you, fate, damn you!”