Aleah Finnegan, Emma Malabuyo and Levi Jung-Ruivivar are the first women’s gymnasts to represent the Philippines since 1964.
By Emily Giambalvo, The Washington PostLSU's Aleah Finnegan celebrates after competing on the balance beam during the NCAA women's gymnastics championships in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, April 20, 2024.
Finnegan will compete Sunday for the Philippines alongside Emma Malabuyo and Levi Jung-Ruivivar, two other Filipino Americans and former U.S. national team members who followed a similar path. They hope their performances will help grow the sport in the Philippines. They will be the first to represent the Philippines in women’s artistic gymnastics at the Olympics since 1964.
Aleah Finnegan, of Philippines, competes on the uneven bars during a women's artistic gymnastics qualification round at Bercy Arena at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Sunday, July 28, 2024, in Paris, France. All three made it to the highest tier of gymnastics in the United States - a level that includes just a few dozen athletes at any time - but they weren’t quite good enough to earn one of the competitive spots on a U.S. team for the world championships or the Olympics.
Malabuyo met with the UCLA coaches last fall with a plan: She would chase her Olympic dream via the sport’s World Cup series while remaining with her college team. It turned into a wildly complicated few months, with Malabuyo competing at several early-season NCAA competitions before traveling to Egypt and Germany. She returned home, competed at Stanford and then headed to Azerbaijan a week later.
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