As soon as USA Gymnastics announced its team lineup for the 2023 World Championships, one of the first things gymnastics fans noticed was that Leanne Wong had been named to the American starting lineup for the third consecutive time. I was asked the following question by a Twitter user:

Who else has made all three World Championships teams for the United States in a single Olympic quad and are there any ‘bonus’ examples if said gymnast made the Olympics as well in the fourth year?

What makes this question so interesting is that it is a double redundant question. The first reason it is redundant is that there is no need to separate American Olympians who have made three consecutive World Championship teams and non-Olympians who have done the same. Every single American gymnast who has ever reached this milestone at the World Championships level is also an Olympian.

The second redundant aspect of this question is that it doesn’t matter if the gymnast went to three World Championships in the same Olympic cycle. It doesn’t matter if said gymnast did it in three consecutive World Championships, but not in the same Olympic cycle. It doesn’t even have to happen in consecutive World Championships at all. Every American who has ever competed in three World Championships is an Olympian.

It doesn’t matter if those three World Championships occurred over the course of an entire decade, three appearances at the World Championships regardless of circumstance correlates to being an Olympian in the American women’s gymnastics program. This famously happened with Jade Carey who turned senior in 2016, made the World Championships three times in 2017, 2019, and 2022. But won’t be eligible to return to the World Championships until 2025 at the earliest.

But Jade Carey is an Olympian and completed the prophecy that the only American gymnasts to have ever competed in three World Championships are either a past Olympian or will become an Olympian the very next time they are held. As Jade Carey demonstrated, this trend is so difficult to accomplish that the only Americans to have done it are gymnasts who have gone on to become Olympians, or returning Olympians who have completed it for the first time.

It is as simple as obtain three appearances of any kind at the World Championships and said gymnast always ends up being an Olympian. The previous 12 gymnasts who have done this are as follows

Alicia Sacramone
Aly Raisman
Chellsie Memmel
Dominique Dawes*
Jade Carey
Jaycie Phelps
Kathy Johnson
Kelly Garrison
Kerri Strug
Nastia Liukin
Shannon Miller
Simone Biles

It should be noted that Dominique Dawes has competed in five different World Championships, but only has two appearances in the context of World Championships that follow a conventional schedule. Her three extra appearances stem from the “split” World Championships in 1994 and FIG’s brief attempt at hosting an extra World Championships in the 1992 and 1996 Olympic years.

While gymnastics fans have come to embrace the concept of a gymnast competing in three World Championships in a single Olympic cycle, such an achievement was impossible for gymnasts of earlier eras, including gymnasts who competed as recently as the 1997-2000 Olympic cycle. FIG had only one World Championships per Olympic cycle prior to 1976, only two per Olympic cycle prior to 1992, while the 1997-2000 Olympic cycle also featured only two World Championships.

The original premise of the question on Twitter was in regards to gymnasts who competed in three consecutive World Championships that all occurred in the same Olympic quad and thus had to maintain consistency in three consecutive years. However, in the 1984, 1988, 1992 and 1998 Olympic cycles there were only two World Championships, but the competitions were placed in Year #1 and Year #3 of the Olympic quad. So even though there were only two World Championships in these time periods, for the gymnasts competing they effectively had to maintain top form in three consecutive years just to make two different World Championship lineups.

If you open up the eligibility of this statistic to include gymnasts who competed in the two non-consecutive World Championships of these four Olympic cycles, that would make Julianne McNamara and Kristin Maloney as the 13th and 14th gymnasts to accomplish this milestone while Leanne Wong would become the 15th gymnast to do so. Once again, all but Leanne Wong are Olympians.

To include the Olympic cycles of 1984, 1988, 1992 and 1998 is as simple as changing the wording to say “gymnasts who have gone three years without missing a World Championships” as opposed to saying “gymnasts who have competed in three consecutive World Championships.”

The following gymnasts qualify for this statistic by having “three of any.” Gymnasts who reached this milestone by competing in any three World Championships regardless of when those World Championships took place.

Aly Raisman
Chellsie Memmel
Dominique Dawes
Jade Carey
Jaycie Phelps

The following gymnasts qualify for this statistic by having two non-consecutive appearances in an Olympic cycle where the World Championships were held twice in non-consecutive years during an Olympic cycle and a gymnast appeared in both.

Julianne McNamara
Kristin Maloney

The following gymnasts qualify for this statistic by having “three consecutive” appearances at the World Championships. Gymnasts who reached this milestone made the lineup for three World Championships in a row regardless of what Olympic quad those World Championships took place. For example, making a World Championships lineup in 2003, 2005 and 2006 with 2004 being and Olympic year instead.

Alicia Sacramone
Kathy Johnson
Kelly Garrison
Kerri Strug
Nastia Liukin
Shannon Miller
Simone Biles
Leanne Wong

But to amend the last list, only the following have done three World Championships appearances in a single Olympic cycle.

Kerri Strug
Shannon Miller
Alicia Sacramone
Nastia Liukin
Simone Biles
Leanne Wong

It should be noted that of the five gymnasts who have previously done it, three of them have medals in the Olympic All-Around. That’s how extreme of a correlation there is between this statistic and expected Olympic success.

So the question is why? Why does a seemingly trivial statistic hold so much sway in predicting Olympic lineups?

For starters, it is an early indicator of talent and this trend highlights those who are amongst the most talented gymnasts USA Gymnastics has in any given decade. Only gymnasts of the most renowned skillset can be this successful for such a longstanding duration of time.

But it mostly stems from pacing, injury and consistency. Gymnasts who have reached this milestone are able to demonstrate that they can consistently perform well under pressure in domestic competition to the point where they can win the grueling team selection process three different times. Making any future Olympic selection process significantly less formidable for them.

It also highlights their durability that these gymnasts can already appear in two different World Championships and come back for a third World Championships without being sidelined by lingering injuries stemming from their two previous appearances. It also proves they have competent coaching in the form of “pacing” where they are committed to a training schedule that isn’t overloading them or leading to premature burnout.

Another factor to consider is also age. For a gymnast to compete in three World Championships or two World Championships across three years, that means she is at least three years older than from where she first started out. For the demographics of a sport where the starting age for entry into senior level competition is around 16 years old, this means that gymnasts will be around 19 years of age at minimum when they reach this milestone.

Having a three year age difference for a demographic involving high school aged gymnasts is absolutely massive because it is during these three years where gymnasts often have to overcome major body changes. Gaining weight and undergoing a growth spurt is very common during these years and that is often a major difficulty for gymnasts who have to compete during this timeline in their lives. In gymnastics, it is not the type of body you have that puts one at a disadvantage in these years, but how quickly your body is changing and how easily you are able to adapt to said changes.

For gymnasts who have reached their third World Championships, they are either old enough where they are past the point in their lives where the most significant body changes occur, or the body changes are currently happening but are happening in a way where it is easily manageable. By the time a gymnast has competed in her third World Championships she no longer has to worry about physical growth associated with reaching adulthood.

This trend highlights the monumental difference between being a 2x participant at the World Championships as opposed to being a 3x participant. The careers of Rebecca Bross and Morgan Hurd are an unfortunate reminder of this trend. Bross and Hurd have two things in common. The first thing they share in common is they are side by side on the list of the most successful gymnasts in the history of the World Championships who never went to the Olympics. Morgan Hurd ranks as the #2 most accomplished non-Olympian at the World Championships level while Rebecca Bross ranks #3.

The other unfortunate aspect Bross and Hurd share in common, they both appeared in two consecutive World Championships, only to miss out on their third attempt at making the World Championships. And starting in year #3, that is precisely when their careers began to decline and would unfortunately be highlighted by a high-profile injury track record in their final years at the elite level.

Unfortunately, there is one awkward aspect of this story that needs to be addressed. What makes this statistic fundamentally important, is it represents American gymnasts who on three different occasions competed against the “A-Team” and on all three occasions they scored within the same range as their fellow A-Team members. This clearly happened with Leanne Wong in 2022 and 2023, but for 2021 things were different.

Because of Covid-19 impacting the competition schedule, the 2021 World Championships was held immediately following the 2021 Olympics. This was not only an extreme rarity by having both the World Championships and Olympics contested in the same year, but by having the World Championships contested after the conclusion of the Olympics was absurd. Under normal circumstances FIG had actively avoided such a schedule because previous competitions, namely the 1980 World Cup in artistic gymnastics and the 1992 World Championships in rhythmic gymnastics had demonstrated such competitions had disastrous participation rates when held immediately after the Olympics.

For all the rhetoric that maybe the 2021 World Championships still retained a strong international field and that many 2021 World Championships veterans have won medals elsewhere, none of that matters in regards to the premise of this historical trend. What matters is whether the American program had high participation rates and the 2021 World Championships lineup did not retain any of its 2021 Olympians. In fact, it was the first American lineup to return none of its previous veterans from any prior Olympics and/or World Championships level competition in 30 years.

For as awkward as this may be to point out, it is important to highlight because this milestone has a 100% success rate in making a future Olympic team, but what makes this milestone a milestone is being included in the lineup of three different A-Teams. Leanne Wong has unquestionably reached this milestone, but she is the first to do so where the circumstances of it are not as clear cut.

But it can just as easily be said “who cares?” Leanne Wong doesn’t need things to be as cut and dry in regards to this statistic, she has already proven that 2024 will be a good year for her. Leanne Wong was an Olympic alternate in 2021 and was the most widely repeated name amongst gymnastics fans and media over which alternate came the closest to making the Tokyo Olympic team. Wong then followed that success up with three consecutive appearances at the World Championships.

Leanne Wong won a gold medal at the 2019 American cup despite being a first year senior. She then proceeded to get through the Covid 2020 sports shutdown without losing any of her momentum and carrying it all into 2021. She was the #1 ranked NCAA prospect amongst her class on College Gym News. She competed elite, competed NCAA, and then returned back to competing elite without losing any momentum. It was another astounding milestone as so many gymnasts have been unable to pivot between those two levels, let along produce increasingly better results while doing it.

Then to top it off, Leanne Wong has not only proven she can compete both NCAA and elite while also competing through the Covid-19 sports shut down, she has one last trick in her bag of bowties. Leanne Wong is so adaptive to a wide range of circumstances she is doing this while having different coaches at the World Championships between her club (GAGE) and college (Florida Gators) coaches.

That’s just what Leanne Wong has accomplished as a senior. As far back as 2018 when Leanne was still a junior she was demonstrating remarkable talent even back then. Most notably, in 2018 she won back-to-back All-Around gold medals at the Junior U.S. Classics and Junior National Championships. In both cases she followed that success up with medals on 3 of 4 events during Event Finals. Bringing her total to winning medals on 10 of 12 events across these two competitions in the final year of her junior career.

Leanne will either prove the trend or be the first to disprove the trend. But if things do not go favorably for Leanne Wong in 2024, she would have a near Olympic miss in 2021 and most likely another near Olympic miss for Paris as well. Demonstrating just how extreme this trend correlates with some form of being an Olympic contender. And if Leanne doesn’t make it in 2024, she could theoretically complete the trend in 2028.

For some gymnasts, you look at their routine composition or their athleticism as they compete the most difficult eponymous skills of the day and be so impressed, you can’t help but think that the gymnast you are watching is going to be an Olympian one day. For Leanne Wong it is different. You look at her competitive resume and see the overwhelming consistency coupled with longevity that is what makes it hard to ignore the inner thought this gymnast is surely going to become an Olympian next year.