For 3 Filipino American gymnasts, an unexpected Olympic opportunity

Pairs: Three years ago, the gymnasts who advanced to the US Olympic trials gathered on the floor at the national championships, held in Texas, and pos...

Pairs: Three years ago, the gymnasts who advanced to the US Olympic trials gathered on the floor at the national championships, held in Texas, and posed while wearing cowboy hats and holding plaques. They could celebrate that their Olympic dreams lived on.

The other athletes, a smaller group of just 10 gymnasts, watched from afar - without cowboy hats, plaques or a chance to earn a spot on the team headed to Tokyo. Aleah Finnegan was part of that disappointed group, and she believed that moment marked the end of her elite career.

So if someone had told her that she would be , "Oh, my gosh, I’d be literally looking at you sideways, like you’re crazy,” said Finnegan, tearing up at the Olympic gymnastics venue in Paris.

After Finnegan began competing for LSU in the next chapter of her career, an official from the Gymnastics Association of the Philippines reached out to her mother with an opportunity: Finnegan could represent her mother’s native country. She decided to return to elite gymnastics and qualified for the Paris Games, a once-unthinkable accomplishment.

Finnegan will compete Sunday for the Philippines alongside Emma Malabuyo and Levi Jung-Ruivivar, two other Filipino Americans and former US 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.