Hezly Rivera did not just defend her national title. She answered one of the biggest questions surrounding her season: could she bounce back when the pressure was highest?
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The 18-year-old Paris Olympic team gold medallist arrived at the 2026 Xfinity U.S. Gymnastics Championships in Phoenix as the defending champion, but her title defense nearly slipped away after a shaky opening night. A fall on uneven bars and a missed required element left Rivera sitting fourth after the first day.
On Sunday, however, she looked like a different gymnast.
Rivera delivered a near-flawless 56.950 in the final to finish with 111.950 across two days, edging training partner Claire Pease, who finished on 110.800. Charleigh Bullock rounded out the podium with 110.550. But Rivera’s comeback was not the only thing that made her performance stand out.
Looking across the major continental championships held this year, Rivera’s 56.950 on the final day of the U.S. Championships currently puts her at the top of the all-around scoring list among the champions being compared. Algeria’s Kaylia Nemour follows with 56.498 from the African Championships, while China’s Ke Qinqin sits third with 56.299 from the Asian Championships.
That makes Rivera’s Sunday performance particularly significant. She did not simply recover from a difficult first night… she produced the strongest score of the group.
And she did it against a field that included two-time Olympic gold medalist Jade Carey and two-time world team gold medalist Skye Blakely. Carey finished fifth overall, while Blakely ended the competition in seventh.
Rivera began her comeback on uneven bars, the apparatus that had caused her problems two nights earlier. This time, she confidently completed the catch-and-release that had gone wrong before, although she still remained more than a point behind Pease.
Then came the balance beam…
A 14.400 helped Rivera cut the deficit in half before she turned the competition around completely on floor. Her powerful 14.300 routine, highlighted by a nearly stuck full-twisting double layout and a clean double layout, was enough to move her into the lead.
She sealed the title on vault with a 14.400 double-twisting Yurchenko. Carey immediately recognized what the performance meant for her younger teammate.
“Hezly did a fantastic job, rebounding from night one and proving to herself and everybody else that that was just a little fluke,” Carey said. “Back-to-back national champion is something she should be really proud of.”
Rivera became only the second woman in the past 13 years to win consecutive U.S. all-around titles, joining Simone Biles, who owns a record nine.
More importantly, Rivera showed that one bad night does not necessarily define a championship. She trailed Pease by six-tenths after the opening day but refused to let the scoreboard dictate her performance. “I wasn’t looking at the scoreboard; I was just focused on myself and my gymnastics and what I had to do,” Rivera said.
That mindset helped her pull off one of the biggest comebacks in recent U.S. championship history. The last gymnast to rise from fourth or lower after the first day and win the national title was Courtney Kupets in 2003.
Now, Rivera’s attention turns toward the next test. A World Championships selection competition is scheduled for Sept. 29-Oct. 1 in Crossville, Tennessee, with the five-woman world team to be named afterward.
Hezly Rivera already has her eyes on unfinished business at the Olympics
Rivera’s rise has been remarkably quick… She was just 16 when she became the youngest U.S. Olympian across all sports at the Paris Games. She was also considered a long shot to make the team, having only recently entered the senior ranks.
Injuries to Shilese Jones and Skye Blakely at the Olympic trials opened the door, and Rivera walked through it by finishing fifth in the all-around and tying for first on beam.
Her Olympic experience was different from that of her more established teammates. Rivera competed only in qualifying, while Biles, Suni Lee, Carey and Jordan Chiles handled the Olympic team final.
Rather than seeing that as the end of her Olympic story, Rivera saw it as the beginning. “I have a lot of things that I want to achieve at the Olympics… I want to win another team medal. I want to get a medal in the all-around and a few individual medals,” she said.
She has even drawn the LA28 logo on a canvas and placed it in her bedroom, where she can see it every night. The Olympic rings are still missing. In a way, that unfinished drawing mirrors Rivera’s ambitions.
Coach Anna Liukin believes the gymnast has already changed significantly since Paris. “She is a lot more mature and a lot more complete gymnast right now,” Liukin said.
Rivera knows there are still several steps before Los Angeles. For now, she is focused on the world championships and the smaller targets along the way. “I just set tiny goals, not just every day, but like every month, and just take it one step at a time and see where it takes me.”
That approach has already taken her from a teenage Olympic newcomer to a back-to-back national champion. And with LA28 slowly moving from a distant dream to a real possibility, Rivera’s latest performance suggests she may have plenty more to add to that unfinished canvas.