Skye Blakely: Focusing on small goals ahead of LA28
Her return to competition has been largely staged in Gainesville, but it received a shot in the arm during a trip back home to Dallas in May.
There, she trained at her old gym WOGA with coaches Yevgeny Marchenko and Sun (Sonia) Haiou and worked with a longtime physical therapist.
“Going home, school’s over, I got to spend time with my parents, my family, see my dog, and also it was good to be back at WOGA, training in a familiar area. I also spent a lot of time working with my PT back home, really working on strength,” says Blakely.
The trip helped her get over both mental and physical obstacles in her recovery.
“I had some bumps in part of the recovery of my Achilles, nothing bad or terrible. Primarily, there was some discomfort that I had to work through, and spending that time at home really working with my PT really got me over that hard part,” explained Blakely.
“A lot of it was mental,” she continues. “At the beginning of the summer, I was actually like, ‘Oh man, I don’t know if I will do my [double back] beam dismount. I don’t know if we’ll see a round-off at all in my routine.’
“But after working that month at home, coming back to Florida, I did a couple of days of round-off timers and then there was one specific day on beam where I was talking with Anya [Pilgrim] and I’m like, ‘Should I just chuck my double back?’ And I made it.
“I had come a long way in a month from thinking I wouldn’t be able to do it to making it to my feet,” Blakely concludes.
And while there’s still a long way to go until the Olympic Games come home for Blakely at LA28, she isn’t waiting around to start showing up.
“[The Olympics] are something that I know is there, but it’s not something I think about every single day,” she said. “It’s definitely my biggest long-term goal, but I’m just trying to take it one day at a time, especially getting back healthy.
“It’s just kind of slowly easing back into elite skills, elite readiness, and focusing on those small goals from year to year,” she continues. “Just taking each year and getting a little bit better, adding a little more difficulty until it’s the Olympic year again.”
This week in New Orleans, she’ll take that next step forward.