For Olympic silver medalist Jordan Chiles, every gymnastics floor seems to be a dance floor – and that’s absolutely the case with her 2023 floor routine. For her sophomore season at UCLA, Chiles has been competing with a ’90s hip-hop floor routine that wows in energy, vibe, and execution. And just this weekend, at the NCAA Los Angeles Regional Final, it earned her a perfect 10, helping to send UCLA to the National Championships for the first time since 2019.
Chiles opens the routine with DJ Kool’s “Let Me Clear My Throat,” powering through a double layout pass and demonstrating the definition of “sticking the landing.” Then she dances through Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It” and “Shoop,” nailing a double back tuck pass, and finishes with an absurdly high double pike. The crowd gets louder after every landing and explodes when she finishes, with attitude, on the floor, her legs and arms crossed.
When Chiles debuted the routine at the start of the season, fans were immediately obsessed. The Instagram video of the performance, posted on Jan. 30 by the PAC-12 conference (the NCAA conference, which broadcasted the meet), was captioned with: “Jordan Chiles ATE this routine ?.” One user commented, “as usual, ate and left no crumbs,” while another wrote: “She just sent everybody a message –I don’t care different country or continent. UCLA, HipHop is real; it’s taken over gymnastics! For black history month Lady Chiles going to be the first person I show. Amazed!”
Back in September 2022, Chiles told POPSUGAR: “What people see is Jordan Chiles, the Olympian, the girl who stepped in and helped [at the Olympics].” But she wants to be remembered as more than an Olympic hero: she’s also “[t]hat same girl who’s going to bring the joy and the fun to the sport.”
And what’s better proof of that than this floor routine? On the video of her perfect-10 regional performance, one Instagram user commented: “She is pure joy ?! Congratulations ? to the entire team!”
Chiles finished the regional meet in second all-around, just behind fellow Bruin Selena Harris, who scored a career-high-tying first-place score of 39.750, and earned her first perfect 10 on vault.
UCLA is headed to NCAA Nationals on April 14-15 alongside seven other teams – Oklahoma, Kentucky, Utah, California, LSU, Denver, and Florida – as the top-ranked team in the nation on floor exercise.
When the team realized they qualified for nationals, it was pure elation: “In that moment our emotions and our celebration were true,” Chiles said, according to a UCLA press release. “It wasn’t like we already knew; it was a very true celebration. I was just excited, I was like man, we really did that. Wow, we really did that, we are going to Fort Worth, Texas with the NCAA Championships.”
While the collegiate gymnastics season will soon be coming to a close, it already has us excited for the the 2024 Olympics in Paris, where some of these college gymnasts are sure to make an appearance – and on which Chiles has already set her sights.
Related: Simone Biles Thinks Jordan Chiles Should’ve Gotten a 10 on This Vault
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