Third-time lucky for gymnast Emma Nedov set to make her Games debut at the age of 28

Paris-bound gymnast Emma Nedov tried retirement a couple of times, but was never any good at it. Now, after her third attempt, she is finally off to the Olympics.

Emma Nedov is the Paris-bound gymnast who just couldn’t do retirement.

She tried it. Twice in fact.

And even briefly flirted with the idea on another occasion.

But the sport - and more importantly the lure of the Olympic Games - kept pulling her back.

Now, at the age of 28 - 23 years after she first stepped foot into a gym at the age of five - Nedov is finally set to fulfil her long-held dream of becoming an Olympian.

“It is a little bit third-time lucky for me,” an excited Nedov said this week after being named in Australia’s largest ever Olympic gymnastics team for Paris.

“But I think it just feels like the right time, right place.

“In hindsight I look back and I’m kind of glad I didn’t make it (before). I think that this is the right one.”

The largest Australian gymnastics team heading to the Olympics. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

The oldest member of Australia’s 13-member Paris gymnastics team, Nedov will make her Olympic debut more than eight years after her first unsuccessful bid for the Rio Games.

In what Nedov described as a “really gutting” moment, Australia failed to qualify a women’s artistic gymnastics team for the 2016 Games - by a heartbreaking two points - after falling short of securing a berth at the Rio test event.

She momentarily thought about pulling the pin on her career then, but decided to press on for the home Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast.

But disaster struck the following year when Nedov snapped her achilles, which cost her a place at the Commonwealth Games and prompted the first of her retirements.

“In 2018, I made it back just in time for Comm Games trials, but they didn’t medically clear me to go,” Nedov recalled.

“I said, ‘Well, stuff that’, so I retired for six months. We went on a family holiday to Europe and had a really great time.

“As we were sitting there one day, I’m pretty sure we were in Croatia, I sat my parents down and I said, ‘I think I want to go back’.

“So that was the first time I retired and failed.”

Emma Nedov will be the oldest member of the 13 gymnasts on the Olympic team. Picture: AAP Image/Stefan Postles

Nedov pressed on with the goal of qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics, but ultimately fell short again, sparking her second retirement.

“Unfortunately, I just missed out on that one,” Nedov said.

“Covid had a big role to play in that. I was trying to qualify myself individually.

“Then I retired properly in 2020 and about seven months ago I thought, ‘Hey, why don’t I try to be an elite gymnast again?’

“To be honest I really struggled to say that I had retired after 2020. My heart was still in gymnastics and I think that I had a little bit of unfinished business.

“It just felt logistically really difficult at the time to keep training. But then I made a move to Melbourne and then accidentally, but also conveniently, moved like a two minute walk from a gymnastics centre that I used to train at in 2015.

“I dabbled here and then and started training a little bit and then I just had a bunch of people who said to me, ‘Hey if you want to go back, we will support you and we believe in you’ and I said ‘OK, that’s all I need. I will do it’.

“I kind of just needed validation that it was OK to try again. So I started doing gymnastics again and I had no idea if it would work out or not, but here I am and now I’m going to the Olympics which is just insane.”

Emma Nedov tried to retire from gymnastics. Picture: AAP Image/Stefan Postles

But couldn’t stay away from the sport. Picture: AAP Image/Stefan Postles

After twice missing out on a ticket to the Games, Nedov had almost convinced herself that - not only was it not going to happen - but she had also attempted to devalue what being an Olympian had meant to her.

“As bad as it sounds, I kind of gave up on it,” Nedov, originally from Turramurra in New South Wales, said.

“I kind of told myself the narrative that ‘No one cares about you if you go to the Olympics, once you finish, you’re done’. So I made up all those stories for myself so that I wasn’t as upset that I hadn’t made it yet.

“It just feels like this was really the right time and the right place and it really validates all the decisions and everything that happened.”

Nedov considers the balance beam to be her strongest gymnastics discipline, but believed her competition experience - albeit not yet on the Olympic stage - would be critical in Paris.

While she never imagined she would still be competing at the age of 28, Nedov said her body now felt as strong as ever.

“If you had told me when I was 18 that you’ll still be doing gymnastics at 28, I probably would have cried,” she said.

“I am actually (holding up) really well because I train smart. I also don’t train the way that I did 10 years ago and I have a huge team around me.

“This is not something that I have achieved on my own, this is something that I have achieved because of the people backing me.

Emma Nedov says she’s in better shape now as a 28 year old than she was 10 years ago. Picture: AAP Image/Stefan Postles

“And a lot of that is to do with keeping me in one piece as well. I have got a team of five people that I trust wholeheartedly to tell me ‘Yes you can do that, no you can’t do that. You need to do this physio, this chiro, this massage’.

“To be honest, I think my body is probably in better shape than it ever has been and I keep that way because I train a little bit better than when I was 19.”

Now that she has finally got her ticket to Paris, Nedov is determined to make the most of her opportunity and the Olympic experience.

“I just want to go out there and have a lot of fun,” Nedov said.

“Having missed out on two it really makes me a lot more present to the fact that I am actually going to an Olympic Games and I am super grateful for that so I am going to cherish every single second I have.

“We want to get a really good team score, I think we can easily break top-eight, even top five in my opinion, we’ve got a really good team, so now it is just going to be refining our routines and working together as a strong team and I will try to do the best I can individually as well.

“I’m so excited, it’s a huge honour. I don’t even think it has fully set in yet.”

Originally published as Third-time lucky for gymnast Emma Nedov set to make her Games debut at the age of 28