"Taught me to never be afraid"- Jade Carey pens heartfelt note for her coach and father on his birthday

Olympic champion gymnast Jade Carey paid a heartfelt tribute to her father Brian Carey, who is also her coach. A former gymnast himself, Brian Carey has been her coach since 2011, and also accompanied her to both the Tokyo Olympics and the Paris Olympics.

The 24-year-old gymnast from Phoenix in Arizona recently took to the social media to express her thoughts about her father. Carey shared two stories about her father on her Instagram account. One of them was a photo from the Tokyo Olympics, which was captioned:

"Happy birthday to the man who taught me to never be afraid of my wildest dreams."

Screengrabs of Jade Carey's birthday tribute to father and coach Brian Carey [Source : Jade Carey's Instagram]

The other was a collection of photographs, including some from her childhood, with the story captioned as,

"Love you"

Born to former gymnasts Brian Carey and Danielle Carey, Jade Carey was a childhood prodigy. Though her father had immediately identified her potential as a promising gymnast, he didn't want to impose his wishes on the young gymnast. In an interview in early 2024, he said:

"I knew when she was young she had a gift. I didn’t want to push it, definitely didn’t want to push it for me. I wanted her to hopefully fall in love with the sport, which she did. I just thought it would be too much when she was little to be coaching her all the time. So I would just clap and ask her how her day was and if she had fun. That was about it.”

The 24-year-old has been coached by her father since she was 11 years old. He even joined the Oregon State University, where she is currently pursuing her higher studies, in order to assist her in a better way.

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Jade Carey at the Paris Olympics

Carey in action during the women's Vault finals at the Paris Olympics 2024 [Image Source : Getty]

Jade Carey entered the Paris Olympics as a strong hopeful of repeating her heroics from the Tokyo Olympics, where she had won a gold medal in the floor exercise event.

The 24-year-old stood fourth in the all-around event at the US Olympic Trials. She also stood first in the vault segment, eighth on uneven bars, sixth in the balance beam segment and second in the floor exercise segment. This enabled her to qualify for Paris Olympics in at least three events : the team all-around event, the vault and the floor exercise.

The preliminaries were far from impressive for Jade Carey, as she wasn't feeling well, and she tumbled during her performance in the floor exercise event, which led to her elimination in the qualification round.

However, Carey recovered from the setback to qualify for the finals of the team-all around event, as well as the individual vault event. She contributed to the gold medal performance of Team USA, which scored 171.296 in total to clinch the Olympic gold medal.

Carey then participated in the vault event, where she scored 14.433 in the qualifications to qualify for the finals, alongside Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles. However, since only a maximum of two gymnasts from each country could be allowed, Chiles had to make way for Simone Biles and Jade Carey.

In the first vault, the Oregon State University gymnast scored a decent 5.6 in difficulty and 9.133 in execution. However, while it was enough to assure a podium finish, it wasn't enough for the Olympic gold medal. Despite a penalty of 0.100, Simone Biles scored an overall total of 15.700 to take an early lead. Rebeca Andrade of Brazil was close behind with a score of 15.100.

In the second vault attempt, Jade Carey scored a total of 14.466. However, Rebeca Andrade edged her out with a score of 14.966. None of them could overcome Simone Biles, who won the gold medal with a score of 15.300 in her second attempt.