Laurie Hernandez competes in a gymnastics meet this Saturday for the first time in four and a half years. So much changed since she won Olympic gold and silver medals in 2016 as the youngest woman in the entire 555-athlete U.S. delegation in Rio.
“I’d like to see how [a meet] feels as an almost 21-year-old rather than competing at 16,” she told NBC Sports last week. “It’s going to be different, I’m well aware.”
Hernandez’s return is the headline athlete story going into the Winter Cup in Indianapolis, the first elite gymnastics meet in the U.