A couple of weeks ago, Jordyn Wieber officially announced her retirement from gymnastics in a guest commentary penned for The Players’ Tribune.

I keep putting off writing this article because I don’t want it to be true, though I suppose we’ve all known for a couple of years now. Back in 2013, there was all of this great news coming out of Twistars…Jordyn’s training for nationals, she’s doing a Weiler full on bars and wants it named for her, she’s totally hungry for more titles…

Even after she arrived at UCLA, she continued training with an elite comeback in mind. She truly loved the sport, but found juggling college life with elite gymnastics too much to handle at once. When it came time to choose, she realized that she “felt fulfilled with what [she] had accomplished in [her] gymnastics career, and was ready to move on to the next phase of [her] life.”

It’s a very smart and mature decision, and she’s seemed nothing but happy since embarking on her new journey in Los Angeles, where she’s taking classes, having fun with friends, and assisting the UCLA Bruins gymnastics team as team manager.

In her piece for the Players’ Tribune, Jordyn reflected on how relatively normal her life as an elite gymnast was, thanks to her family and friends who kept her grounded and balanced. But no matter how “normal” your life may be, when you catch the eye of national team coordinator Martha Karolyi at the age of ten, your talent is anything but.

Just a month after her 11th birthday, Jordyn – already a prodigy – placed 9th in the junior division at the 2006 U.S. Championships in a field of 32 gymnasts, finishing ahead of many girls four years her senior. She made her first national team that year and quickly moved up the ranks, earning the bronze all-around medal in 2007 and then gold in 2008, all before she turned 13.

It was clear then that Jordyn would be a star. In my history of being a gym fan, I can’t recall ever thinking “she’s going to the Olympics” about any other gymnast that young, but with Jordyn, you could just tell.

Even when she had some struggles due to injuries in the early half of the 2012 quad, she didn’t seem deterred and always looked ready to fight. I’ll never forget being at Championships in 2010, watching her fall three times from the balance beam and thinking something must be physically wrong with her because Jordyn would never make those mistakes. Blythe Lawrence of the Gym Examiner turned to me and said “there’s blood on the beam!” Yes, there was a pause in the competition on beam as officials went to check it out, and moments later Wieber withdrew.

It turns out the blood belonged to someone else, but something else was definitely wrong. Going back to watch the video of her routine following the competition, you could see her completely roll her ankle on her mount, which is the injury that led to her looking shaky and distracted throughout the set, causing her to have uncharacteristic mistakes and falls. But she was just so determined to finish, the pain of a sprained ankle was nothing to her. She fought through it and only after crashing her dismount on her hands and knees decided “yeah, I probably shouldn’t do floor.”

Tough. That was Jordyn in a nutshell. When I talked to her coach John Geddert at the American Cup in 2011 – where Jordyn notoriously defeated reigning World all-around champion Aliya Mustafina by just seven hundredths of a point despite falling on bars – he chalked her “barely scraping by” wins up to an insane mental toughness that helped her forget past routines and focus on what was still to come. More often than not, it worked.

“She always manages to climb out of holes. Can you imagine if she didn’t dig them to begin with?” Geddert laughed.

The American Cup was just the beginning of her senior career, and though it would go on to span only 18 months, Jordyn amassed all-around titles at the 2011 U.S. Championships, 2011 World Championships, 2012 American Cup, 2012 Pacific Rim Championships, and 2012 U.S. Championships. At the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials, she earned silver, finishing just a tenth behind Gabby Douglas.

Then came the Olympics.

She’d been the favorite for all-around gold before anyone knew who Douglas was, but she dealt with the pressure beautifully. During qualifications, she tried her best and had a very strong day, but as a gymnast, that’s just about all you can control. You can’t control how the judges score your routines, and you certainly can’t control the arbitrary rules that make this sport so frustrating.

It didn’t matter that Jordyn finished 4th in a field of 60 and was one of the best gymnasts in the world with a heel injury. What mattered were the two tenths that separated her from Douglas, keeping her out due to the two-per-country rule instated after the Romanian sweeps a decade earlier with the intention of making finals more inclusive.

Fans are quick to remember the disappointment in this moment – a crying Jordyn being comforted by Jenny Zhang and Beth Tweddle, a conflicted Aly Raisman not sure whether she should celebrate her own victory or support her friend, the press that called her “not good enough.” This “disappointment” is why so many of us assumed she’d be back for more. No one wanted her to finish on a “low note” when she clearly deserved much more.

But think about it. Low note? Really? She competed at the freaking Olympics. Of the roughly 100,000 girls enrolled in USA Gymnastics J.O. programs annually, only five get to do this every four years. Also, Martha Karolyi counted on her to hit three events in team finals, a huge responsibility she handled with ease, helping the United States to their first Olympic team gold medal since 1996.

And though a silly rule kept her out of the all-around final, if you took the top five girls in qualifications and had them compete all four events every day for five days, it would have been entirely possible for a different gymnast to win it each day. Including Jordyn. Not qualifying into the all-around really sucked, but it doesn’t change the fact that she was still one of the best gymnasts in the world.

It wasn’t the perfect Olympic Games for the girl who worked so hard to get there, but in the end Jordyn came out with a gold medal, something millions dream of and only an elite few actually achieve.

“It goes without saying that the Olympics was the highlight of my career,” Jordyn wrote in her announcement. “As I move on from the sport, I want to be sure it is known that I am completely fulfilled and content with my experience at the Games. It was difficult to accept the reality of having an injury at the most crucial moment in my career. I am grateful that I was able to compete and be part of winning the Olympic team gold.”

Personally, Jordyn was one of the first elite gymnasts I got the chance to follow from beginning to end, both as a fan (I might still wear my Wieber Fever t-shirt to the gym) and through covering the sport. I’ll always remember her stoic, no-nonsense attitude on the competition floor but also the silly side that came through when the press wasn’t watching. I loved that she chucked huge skills as a junior, but was more impressed that she could hold onto all of them for years, straight up until she stopped competing. I enjoyed watching her as an individual who walked in the room and dominated almost every meet she entered, and respected her for supporting her teammates, even when her own heart was broken.

Thank you, Jordyn, for the heart you brought to the sport. We wish you the best of luck at UCLA and in your future, and in the spirit of moving on to the next phase of our lives, we promise to limit the time we spend crying while watching montages of your career.

Article by Lauren Hopkins