Jordan Chiles is on a hunt for her first NCAA all-around title, and the next 5 days will decide if she gets there. Last year, all she could earn was the NCAA uneven bars title with a 9.975, as UCLA settled for a second-place team finish. But Chiles knows, “I have a name for myself.” Still, even that reputation, along with her 2 Olympic gold medals, doesn’t make her the top pick for the title, because someone else is firmly holding that spot.

The title of the “top contender” goes to LSU sophomore Kailin Chio, according to Forbes, while Jordan Chiles sits second in the favorites list. Shocking, isn’t it?

But that’s just how good Chio has been this season. The 24-year-old UCLA star has been utterly dominant in the 2026 season and held the No. 1 national ranking for eight of the season’s eleven weeks until the sophomore Chio showed up.

She had been keeping pace with Chiles, just behind the Olympian, and then surged forward from week nine onwards. That was thanks to her scoring 9.8500 on the vault, 9.9500 on the uneven bars, and a perfect 10 on the balance beam against Alabama, Arizona, and North Carolina in early March. It set the stage perfectly for her, and since then, Chio has been virtually untouchable.

Because even Jordan Chiles, recording eight perfect 10s, couldn’t catch up to the LSU sophomore, who earned twelve perfect 10s, a program record. And yet, the battle is far from over because going into the NCAA gymnastics final, Chiles walks in as the Big Ten Gymnast of the Year after capturing the all-around crown with a 39.825 score.

It’s the highest ever all-around score at the event and only the second time a gymnast has tallied at least 39.800 at the event in Big Ten history. For Chiles, however, it marks her eleventh all-around title of the season, which gives her a slight edge going into the meet.

Not that big of an edge, mind you, as College Gym News did a data deep dive, and it ranked Chiles as the third favourite to win the all-around title. The first was Chio, but second place, with a 21.37% chance of winning the all-around title, is No. 3 Florida Gators’ senior Selena Harris-Miranda. Chiles comes in a distant third with only an 18.15% chance, which does come as a surprise given that Harris-Miranda is ranked sixth nationally.

However, the Florida senior has, like Chiles and Chio, been in stunning form in the postseason. She scored a perfect 10 on the uneven bars to help win the 2026 SEC team title. It does make things interesting for Jordan Chiles, but the 24-year-old tends to do well with the odds stacked against her. Unfortunately for her and UCLA, they’re not favourites to win the team title either, something they failed to do in 2025.

There, they fell just short, losing out to Oklahoma despite winning the Big Ten Championships, although Chiles did grab her second NCAA title on the uneven bars, and third overall. The hope is that Chiles and UCLA’s first and only regional title win together will be the catalyst to push them forward.

Jordan Chiles leads UCLA to regional title in her final season

In the four years that she has been at the college and been eligible to participate, Jordan Chiles has never won a regional title. In 2023, they finished second and qualified for the NCAA Championship despite losing out to Utah, 198.050 to 197.925. There, Chiles won her first and second NCAA titles, on the uneven bars and floor, finishing second in the all-around.

Then Chiles took 2024 off for the Olympics, while UCLA didn’t do particularly well as they failed to qualify for the Regional finals and finished 17th, the team’s lowest placement in nearly two decades. With 2025 came new hopes, and while they may have finished second by the end of things, they also qualified second, losing out to Utah yet again, albeit things were slightly closer this time.

While UCLA scored 197.625, Utah won the regional final with 197.825. And this time in 2026, the razor-thin margins went in favour of UCLA as Chiles walked away with her first regional title.

“Four years here, I’ve never won regionals,” Chiles said, as per the Daily Bruin. “This is something that I have always wanted in my career.”

And like she had been the entire season, the 24-year-old was at the heart of things, producing her eighth perfect 10 of the 2026 season in what could have been her final routine for the Bruins. It all worked out in the end, as it was exactly what UCLA needed to top the charts with a 197.725, finishing above the shockingly second-place Minnesota (197.625). 

Utah was a not-so-distant third with 197.500, but it didn’t matter because the win marked UCLA’s first regional title since 2019. But while Jordan Chiles may have been at the heart of things, she wasn’t the only one who performed, as freshman Tiana Sumanasekera, sophomore Mika Webster-Longin, and junior Sydney Barros, among others, all showed off their skills. That was despite the Bruins adding onto the pressure themselves by only counting scores of 9.900 or higher.

It meant that Ciena Alipio’s 9.875, which would have counted anywhere else, was dropped from the final total, and that pleased coach Janelle McDonald.

“That was one of the closest competitions I’ve ever been a part of. Every single team on the floor was going lights-out,” McDonald said. “We knew we needed to bring our best.”

And that’s exactly what Jordan Chiles and UCLA will need to maintain, their best. Going into the 2026 NCAA Gymnastics Championships final, the competition is against them, and even at their best, the odds are still stacked against them as the numbers don’t quite lean their way.