Skye Blakely completes comeback with world all-around gold

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands — Skye Blakely spent the biggest night of her gymnastics life competing for someone else. "Throughout the night I was telling myself, 'Do it for the girl from 2021, for when I couldn't do everything,'" she said. "'Just fight for her.'" On Friday night at the Ahoy Arena, the 21-year-old from Frisco, Texas, fought for her — and became the world champion.

Blakely, a junior at the University of Florida, totaled 55.733 points to win the women's all-around at the World Gymnastics Championships, the biggest individual title of her elite career and her first individual world medal in four trips to the championships. She finished 0.534 points clear of Liudmila Roshchina, the Russian competing as a neutral athlete, who took silver at 55.199. China's 16-year-old Ke Qinqin earned bronze with 55.032.

She is the ninth American woman to win the world all-around crown — the 15th world all-around title for the United States — and the first American since Simone Biles in 2023. Remarkably, Blakely had never reached a world all-around final before Friday; in her first one, she won it.

Blakely led at the halfway mark and never looked back. She opened with a 14.200 on vault, the second-best score of the final, then posted 14.400 on uneven bars and 14.200 on balance beam, both third among the 24 finalists. That built a 1.001-point cushion heading to floor — the same apparatus where she ruptured her Achilles two days before the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials. Her 12.933 ranked only 16th on the night, but she needed merely to stay upright, and she did, the crowd clapping along as her tumbling passes sailed.

Getting there, as she put it, "is the part that will stay with her." In 2021, warming up for her first event at the Olympic Trials for the delayed Tokyo Games, Blakely tore an elbow ligament — an injury that required Tommy John surgery. She came back to win team gold at the 2022 and 2023 world championships. In 2024 she was runner-up to Biles at the U.S. Championships, in prime position to make the five-woman Olympic team for Paris — then ruptured her right Achilles on floor two days before trials and underwent season-ending surgery.

For nearly two years she stayed away from elite all-around competition. She returned to competition for Florida in January 2025, rebuilt slowly under coach Owen Field, and didn't contest floor and vault at the elite level until last winter. This past August she tied for the lead after the first day of the Xfinity U.S. Championships before slipping to seventh overall — but still made the world team and qualified second in Rotterdam. "I used to flip through magazines and dream of moments like this," she said. "I'm so thankful that God didn't give up on me, and kept pushing me even when I didn't see a way for this to be possible."

Field, who guides Blakely at Florida, has deliberately paced her return with the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics as the ultimate goal. "She's capable of more difficulty on vault, but she wants to drag it out and take the time and pace and make sure that she's healthy when the most important meets are here," he said. She held back upgrades in Rotterdam too — "Should I do the upgrade?" she admitted wondering — and won anyway. "Keep doing my normal, because my normal is enough," she said. When the final standings posted after a wait of more than five minutes, Field's message was short: "You're Skye Blakely, baby."

The field around her fell away one by one. Algeria's Kaylia Nemour, the qualifying leader and pre-meet favorite, stuttered her vault run and was forced into a simple layout, finishing fourth at 54.998 — just .034 out of bronze. Alena Glotova of Russia, the leader after the first rotation, fell twice on beam. Ke fell on her beam dismount. Blakely's teammate Claire Pease, 17, fell off beam on her second rotation and ended seventh at 54.232 — two days after totaling 56.099 in the team final, the highest all-around score of the entire competition. Pease salvaged the night's best floor score at 13.733.

The absent loomed over the week too: reigning world all-around champion Angelina Melnikova was among Russian gymnasts denied visas by Dutch authorities, and none of the 2024 Olympic all-around medalists entered — Biles and Suni Lee aren't competing this season, and Brazil's Rebeca Andrade is contesting only beam and vault here. Her win extended a remarkable American run: a U.S. woman on every Olympic and world all-around podium since 2003, 24 global championships in a row.

And the championships aren't over for her. Two days before the all-around, Blakely anchored the United States to the team silver medal — the only member of the five-woman squad with prior world team-final experience — and secured a berth at the LA28 Games. She is the only gymnast at these championships to qualify for four individual finals: vault and uneven bars go Saturday morning at 8 a.m. ET, with balance beam and floor closing the meet Sunday. She's also the first gymnast ever to win a world all-around title in the same calendar year she competed in NCAA gymnastics — and the first non-teenager to win her first world title in the middle of a college career.

"Grateful, full of emotions, full of joy. Just so thankful to God," Blakely said. "I just needed it all to come together at the right time, and I couldn't have asked for a better night or a better moment."