On Set With Jordan Chiles at The Boca Raton

SI Staff | May 13, 2025

On Set with Jordan Chiles at The Boca Raton /

Gymnast and two-time Olympian Jordan Chiles is a complete force both on and off the mat. Having earned her elite status as a gymnast at the age of 11, Chiles made her debut at the American Classic in 2013. Eight years later, she earned herself a spot on the U.S. women’s national team for the Olympics. The Oregon native was part of the gold medal-winning U.S. women’s gymnastics team during the 2024 Paris Olympics, and is also an all-around Winter Cup and Pan American Games champion who has won two individual NCAA titles with UCLA. We sat down with Jordan Chiles on set of her Sports Illustrated Swimsuit photo shoot, her experience at the Olympics, and her platform.

TRANSCRIPT

Oh my gosh, y’all. As you can tell, I have no voice.

Hey, it’s Jordan Chiles, and I am on set with Sports Illustrated Swimsuit.

I remember when I first got to the gym that my parents took me to. I remember thinking, you know, I was getting a dog, and they brought me to a gym, that I did not know why I was there until they told me that I was going to start gymnastics classes, and you know, everything after that was kind of just, like, history.

I think the biggest thing that people misconceive is, really, knowing what gymnastics is, and they don’t understand how hard our sport is. It’s definitely something that is hard on your body. As gymnasts, we have more of an impostor syndrome than a lot of people just in the real world. Being [on] the pro side, the athlete side, a businesswoman—it’s a lot. It is very time-consuming, but I’m very thankful for it.

You have a dream as a little kid, and you never know if it gets fulfilled or not because there’s so many things that you do within your life. Knowing that I can say I’m a professional athlete, it’s pretty cool. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel like I did something within my sport, but balancing it is really hard.

I think the thing that I would love to see is when you’re at a young age, using your voice. That was one thing that I tried doing, but it wasn’t being heard. ‘You’re just saying this because,’ you know, ‘you have an attitude’ or something like that, and it was like, ‘No, I’m actually going through these phases of my life. And I would like for you to at least listen. You don’t have to give me feedback or anything like that, but at least listen.’

So yeah, I just want, you know, them to know that you can use your voice at any point in time, whether somebody’s listening or not, but as long as you can get it out and you feel like you can look back and be like, ‘I’m happy I use my voice because I wanna be where I am right now,’ then go for it, because that’s what I wish I did.

I really want my voice to come back because I sound like Serena from Love Island.

Oh my gosh, the Olympic Games. Which one? Tokyo or Paris? I’m just kidding. Well, those were two different experiences. In Tokyo, it was COVID. It was an amazing time to be able to say that was my first Olympics, but also, you know, there’s a lot of things that happened then. Paris was amazing. Paris was magnificent. Hey, we came back with a gold medal. I never thought in a million years I would go to a second Olympics. I only wanted one, and God said, ‘No, you’re going to two.’ My favorite, I think, was having Snoop Dogg there, and, like, all the celebrities, because during that time frame, you never know how many people are actually watching gymnastics, and that’s when I knew, ‘OK.’

One thing that I would hope that people continue to do is just support us. If men can do it, women can do it. That’s how I see it.

The biggest thing I want people to take away is understanding that my body is my body and that I have the ability to express it in millions of different ways and people are going to accept that. It’s really cool just being able to finally embrace my beauty in the way I can so hopefully people can see the beauty inside of me and that they understand that this is a dream come true for me.