Katelyn Ohashi returns to elite gymnastics from Seattle as she pursues a place at LA 2028
Katelyn Ohashi is mounting a comeback to elite gymnastics from Seattle as she chases a place on the United States team for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics, the 29-year-old said in an interview published on 7 August 2026. Ohashi has framed the return around enjoyment of the sport rather than redemption.
Ohashi left elite gymnastics in 2013 after a back injury ended her prospects for that cycle and spent the ensuing years at UCLA, where her perfect-10 floor routines went viral. She was the last gymnast to beat Simone Biles in the all-around at the American Cup before moving to NCAA competition, and she says college restored her joy for the sport.
Her routine now is structured but modest: each morning she makes a smoothie, walks a four-month-old puppy, drives to the gym, shares a moment of gratitude and warms up alongside gymnasts much younger than her. Ohashi trains four days a week for about four hours per day while continuing with hobbies such as sewing, knitting and jewellery making.
The decision to pursue LA 2028 crystallised after she toured with Simone Biles’s Gold Over America show in 2021 and watched Paris 2024 pass. “This time around, it just felt like: OK, LA, home soil. For gymnastics, I’m definitely getting up there in age,” Ohashi said, and she decided to move out of Los Angeles to focus on training.
She found a training base at Pacific Reign Gymnastics in Woodinville, Washington, through a friendship with owner Cale Robinson, a former Stanford men’s gymnast. Robinson recalled how conversations with Ohashi turned practical — “We, like, loosely mapped things out,” — and said she worked with a personal trainer and lifted weights daily to rebuild strength. Robinson advised: “Get a team of people around you, like your physical therapist, all of the people that you need to make sure that you’re healthy first and foremost.”
Valorie Kondos Field, the former UCLA head coach known as Miss Val, has been part of Ohashi’s support group and praised her mentality. Kondos Field said Ohashi has “one of the strongest minds of any athlete that’s ever played sport” and added: “At the end of the day, Katelyn is not fixating on a score. Yes, she has a goal. She’d love to make the Olympic team or whatever that is. We don’t even talk about that. It’s like: what is today going to look like for you? How are you going to go home at the end of the day with no regrets?” Kondos Field flew to Seattle for three days this summer to help refine a floor routine she described as “badass,” a two-and-a-half pass floor to jazz-inspired music that she said “marries the contemporary feel of artistic gymnastics in this era while respecting the classical essence of elite gymnastics.”
Ohashi returned to senior competition in June at the American Classic, where she performed a standing Arabian on beam and said when she saluted after the routine, “Oh yeah, this is where I’ve always been. This is where I belong.” At the US Classic in July she competed on beam and floor and finished four-tenths shy of qualifying for this weekend’s US national championships.
Her personal life has changed alongside the training: she moved from Los Angeles back to Seattle in January to live and train, and the move coincided with family health challenges. Ohashi said on Zoom from the hospital that her father began struggling with heart conditions, her mother fractured her hip the day before their conversation, and that her father, “an avid bowler and former Seattle City Light employee,” died in May. She added, “I’m sure he would be very proud. He always wanted it to be my dream. My mom probably wanted it to be her dream, and he was just along for the ride and supported in any possible way he could, and I’m sure he still is.”
Ohashi’s presence has already affected younger gymnasts at Pacific Reign: 18-year-old Simone Rose, who once watched Ohashi compete for UCLA, said training alongside her has made meets “a lot more fun” and that it is “pretty incredible to go from looking up to her as a young gymnast to now calling her my teammate.” The United States has substantial depth for LA 2028 — including Jade Carey, Leanne Wong and Sunisa Lee — and only five gymnasts will make the US Olympic team for Los Angeles, but Ohashi said she is balancing ambition with realism: “I don’t want to shy away from [LA 2028], but I also want to be realistic with where my body is every day and make sure I’m still doing it for me and for the love of the game,” she said.
Ohashi will not compete at this year’s US nationals. Don’t count her out at the next one.