Seven surgeries crushed an Olympic dream

And I'll tell you, she has got plans. She wants to become an international elite, make the national team, make the 2020 Olympics. After I'm done with gymnastics, I want to become a coach, have my own leotard line and write a book. She's got it mapped out. She knows what she wants. There are several gymnasts whose careers we look back on with mixed emotions, where the highs were really high, yet the lows were just excruciating to watch. Oh boy. And that description certainly applies to Morgan Hurt. In a twist of events during her first year as a senior, she took home the crown jewel of artistic gymnastics. She came out of nowhere and shocked, I think, herself and the world. Can never take that away, all-around champion of the world. She added a beam silver to her resume a couple of days later. The following year, she kept reinforcing her status as one of the top athletes in the world, winning the 2018 American Cup, placing second at nationals behind Simone Biles and collecting an all-around bronze, floor silver and team gold at the World Championships. But while at the surface, everything seemed to be going well for Morgan, behind the scenes, she was struggling with ongoing injuries. In December, she underwent a third elbow surgery, which hindered her preparation for the 2019 season, and as a result, she completely underperformed for her standards, only being named a non-traveling alternate for the world team. I was really disappointed and upset. I just felt like a failure. But as the relentless competitor she is, Morgan returned stronger than ever in 2020. That is exactly what champions do. They endure and they overcome. And boy, did she. Hurd was possibly in the best shape of her career, winning the American Cup with newly upgraded routines, looking like a force to be reckoned with, only six months away from the Tokyo Olympics. And then the unthinkable came. A worldwide pandemic, which pretty much turned everything upside down. The Games were postponed an entire year, and let's just say those extra 12 months were not very kind to the American gymnast. In August 2020, Hurd underwent surgery on both her elbows, and in March 2021, the 19-year-old went under the knife again. Cards on the table, things were just not looking promising for Morgan. With very little time to recover, and the delayed Games barely five months away, she opted out of the all-around and focused on her two strongest events, beam and floor. You know, it's so ironic she has said that the pandemic probably, and the wait of an extra year, probably not good for her in her quest for Tokyo. But then she also said, coming back from these injuries, if I just had one more month. The 2021 U.S. Championships were the final nail in the coffin, absolutely shattering her hopes of making the Olympic team. She's had a total of seven surgeries on her elbows. Wow. Six of them on her right elbow, and two of those six were just in March of this year. Removed some bone spurs and released a nerve. On beam, she completely fell apart on both days of the competition, hopping off the apparatus three times on the first day and two times on the second. On floor, the four-foot-nine-inch gymnast also failed to deliver strong performances, stepping out of bounds on multiple occasions and being heavily deducted for lack of control and low-chested landings. With scores in the 10.0 range on beam and 12.0 range on floor, Morgan finished in 26th and 23rd, respectively, in the overall rankings, failing to make the national team for the first time in six years and to qualify for the Olympic trials. The former world champion closed the elite chapter of her career and moved on to the collegiate scene to become a Florida Gator. Her farewell to elite gymnastics was both touching and painful for many, leaving a bittersweet feeling that Morgan truly deserved a brighter send-off, one worthy of her legacy.