Every few years when the Olympics would roll around, the unmistakable pangs Jen Castellano knew were coming but was powerless to stop would hit.
Of chalk on her hands. The beam underneath her feet. The sounds and smell of a packed gym. The intoxicating mix of frustration, determination and joy while trying to master a new skill.
Only, as her 20s turned into her 30s, the director of investment operations at a firm in Raleigh, North Carolina, felt she had nowhere to go to turn those pangs into something tangible.
“I never thought I would do gymnastics again,” Castellano said.
Then, in the summer of 2021, she watched Simone Biles (23 at the time) and 33-year-old mother of two Chellsie Memmel compete at the U.S. championships. Castellano soon found herself on a website ordering a couple of leotards.
Not long after the Tokyo Olympics, inspired by what she’d watched, Castellano summoned the courage to visit Triumph Gymnastics in Cary, North Carolina, the rare gym that offered adult classes. She quickly discovered those familiar pangs were not unique to her.
The demographics surrounding the sport are shifting, and not just at the elite level, where Biles and the oldest women’s team the U.S. has ever sent to the Olympics — the aptly nicknamed “ Golden Girls ” — returned to the top of the podium in the team final on Tuesday night.
On Thursday, Biles will try to become the oldest Olympic all-around champion in 72 years. Her stiffest competition figures to come from 25-year-old Brazilian Rebeca Andrade in an event that also includes Ellie Black of Canada and Filipa Martins of Portugal, both 28.
Their longevity is reflective of a global movement of a sport long considered the realm of the very young. Not so much anymore, as doors long thought shut have swung back open.
Participation in adult gymnastics — from former competitors like Castellano who returned after a long hiatus to novices trying to get the hang of a forward roll — is soaring.
The National Association of Intercollegiate Gymnastics Clubs serves as a landing spot for gymnasts over 18 at the non-elite, non-NCAA level. While the majority of its membership consists of college students who compete as part of a club, it also offers a “non-student” division, meaning anyone at any age can compete at one of its meets, including its national championships.
NAIGC executive director Ilana Shushansky estimates that 20% of the participants at nationals earlier this year in Albuquerque, New Mexico, registered as “non-students.” It’s a percentage Shushansky believes will continue to rise, fueled in part by former gymnasts rediscovering — and in many cases redefining — their relationship with the sport that drew them in as kids only to seemingly abandon them as young adults.
“This is allowing them to meet the sport on their terms,” Shushansky said.
That’s the way it is for many of those who have made their way to one of the adult camps hosted by Memmel, who retired for good in 2021 and now serves as the co-lead for the USA Gymnastics women’s national team when she’s not running the gym she and her father, Andy, run in Wisconsin.
Memmel wasn’t trying to prove a point when she came out of retirement in 2021. She did anyway. Messages of support poured into her social media accounts as other 30 and 40-somethings latched onto her journey.
The comments often included a common refrain, some version of “hey, we want to get back into gymnastics, too, but how do we do it?”
“It’s that unfinished business,” said 44-year-old Angela Fuller, who like Castellano quit in her teens only to feel the itch to return while watching Memmel in 2021 and now competes at 5280 Gymnastics outside Denver. “It’s that dangling carrot. We needed someone to lead the way and show us that it’s possible and that’s what Chellsie Memmel did for gymnastics.”
In the summer of 2022, Memmel opened registration for an adults-only camp. She hoped 40 people would sign up. Within hours she had to cap enrollment at 75 out of fear she couldn’t find enough coaches to handle the workload.
Now several times a year athletes from their 20s to their 50s with various levels of experience — and in the case of some, none at all — spend a weekend at a camp led by an Olympic medalist who has become a touchstone for a movement.
While Memmel sees it as a way of giving back, selfishly there’s something in it for her, too. The vibe in the camps are a stark contrast to the culture at the elite level she grew up in, in the best way possible.
United Arab Emirates Dirham Exchange Rate
