RIO DE JANEIRO – She’s been part of the first U.S. teams to win back-to-back Olympic gymnastics gold, captaining both of them. She’s an all-around silver medalist. She’s been the gymnast Martha Karolyi has trusted for years.
But as she nears what is very likely the end of her gymnastics career, Aly Raisman has flown under the radar despite assembling one of the best Olympic resumes of any American gymnast.
With five Olympic medals, she is tied with Nastia Liukin and Mary Lou Retton as the second-most decorated American gymnasts of all time. With a medal on floor exercise – an event she won gold on in London – Raisman would be alone in second and just one behind Shannon Miller.
“I think she feels that way, not necessarily the best ever. But one of the best, and I think she’s deserving to feel that way because just looking for the medals she achieved, the numbers,” said Mihai Brestyan, Raisman’s longtime coach. “A medal is a medal. It doesn’t matter the color that much.
“She was the spine of the team in 2012, spine of the team here, the most trusted gymnast.”
Raisman captained the Fierce Five, which won the country’s second ever team gold medal. In addition to her gold medal on floor, she also earned bronze on balance beam.
She helped the Final Five to team gold again here, making Raisman and teammate Gabby Douglas the only Americans with back-to-back team golds.
Because she’s been on teams with two all-around champions – Douglas in London and Simone Biles here – Raisman’s contributions have been a little overshadowed.
But that doesn’t bother Raisman.
Her all-around silver here felt like vindication after she lost a tiebreaker for third in London. And with Biles, the greatest gymnast of all time, ahead of her, she knew that was the best she could do.
“I knew that the gold was out of the question so the silver for me genuinely feels like the gold medal,” Raisman said, “so I was so happy and so proud.”
Raisman took more than a year off before deciding to come back, and that return had its rocky moments.
At last year’s world championships, she was fourth in qualifying and didn’t make the all-around final. She didn’t make an event final either, and she worried Karolyi wouldn’t have her back at national team camps.
But Karolyi and Brestyan turned the experience into a positive, and it launched her into this season.
Without question, she is doing the best gymnastics of her life. Her Amanar vault has never been better. She’s commanding on floor, although she faces a similar ceiling there as Biles is favored to win gold on Tuesday.
“I feel like I’m better than I am in 2012, so I’m very proud of that,” Raisman, 22, said. “It’s obviously not something that people expect or that’s easy to do after taking a year off and having it be the second Olympics or being the grandma or whatever they like to say. So I’m happy I proved everyone wrong.”
Well, almost everyone. Karolyi has long trusted Raisman, one of the country’s most consistent performers and hardest workers. Brestyan made her do a year of conditioning before allowing her back on any apparatus.
“In all the years and it’s been many years, one time I could not say Aly try harder because she always tried her best,” Karolyi said. “It doesn’t always turn out the best but you could not blame her because she always gave what she had.”
That has been true in Rio. Raisman will not receive the attention of Biles, who could finish with four golds in her first Olympics.
But with a chance at another medal, Raisman stands to end her career as one of the USA’s best.
