Amelie Morgan doesn’t have anything to prove as a gymnast, particularly as a gymnast for her home country — Great Britain.
After all, she made the British Olympic team that competed in Tokyo in 2021 and helped win the country’s first team medal (bronze) in women’s gymnastics since 1928, ending a 93-year drought.
Morgan’s place in British gymnastics history is set. She will forever be remembered.
The thing is, she’s not done yet.
Monday night, Morgan announced on social media that she will be returning to her home country this winter to compete in the English gymnastics championships.
Tuesday, she told the Deseret News that her goal is to qualify for this summer’s Paris Olympics, though her immediate focus is on the English championships in early March.
“Just aiming for the English championships and we’ll see what happens,” Morgan said. “That is the goal for now.”
The decision to return to elite gymnastics was long in the making for the reigning Pac-12 Specialist of the Week.
As recently as early April 2023, Morgan was pretty content to finish out her gymnastics career competing at the NCAA level at the University of Utah.
But as 2023 came to a close and 2024 began, she began to think more and more about a return to elite gymnastics and her home.
“I definitely am satisfied with everything I’ve done and accomplished,” Morgan said. “I feel like I’m going to leave the sport feeling accomplished no matter what. But at the same time, I feel like there is an opportunity to compete one last time for my country and in my country. I feel like if I don’t at least go back and try to do elite one last time that I will regret it in the future.”
Morgan made it clear that her return to elite competition is about her and her alone, specifically her desire to have fun doing a sport she loves at the highest level.
“Throughout this whole process of trying to get my skills back and put together routines, I just have to keep reminding myself that if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out,” she said. “This is only a bonus for me. This is going to be an extra little something that I can challenge myself with. I can’t be disappointed if it doesn’t work out. This just for fun. I’m going to go back and see what I can do.”
Morgan will take a midseason break from competing for Utah gymnastics. Her final meet before returning home to England will be at UCLA on Feb. 19. She will return in time to compete for Utah at the Pac-12 championships on March 23.
Utah head coach Carly Dockendorf noted that the Red Rocks will rely on freshmen, such as Elizabeth Gantner and Camie Winger, to fill the gaps left by Morgan. Those freshmen will continue to see competition time prior to Morgan’s departure, either via exhibition routines or other opportunities in lineups.
“Obviously you can’t replace Amelie,” Dockendorf said. “The great thing is we do have a lot of depth this year. We do have options on both of those events to go in. For beam, we’ll have to move someone back to (the) leadoff (position) and I think we have a few options that can be fantastic.”
Dockendorf added that determining who will take over as the leadoff for Utah on balance beam looms as the biggest challenge, but she’s confident that the Red Rocks can manage in Morgan’s absence.
“That is probably something that we will have to start working on a little bit more,” she said. “I think we have already been giving our No. 7 and No. 8 (gymnasts in the beam lineup) lots of opportunities to go and we will just continue to build on that.”
Throughout the winter, Morgan has strived to balance her training for elite and NCAA gymnastics, hopefully to the benefit of both.
It has been tricky, though. Different than anything she’s previously experienced.
“It definitely has been a lot different this time around preparing for elite competition,” Morgan said. “I’m trying to balance both NCAA and elite and it is a different process. I’ve had to do things a lot different than I did before.”
“I think it has been about finding a way to get my NCAA assignments done quickly so I can do more elite stuff. But all my NCAA stuff just helps my elite routines, making them stronger. I’ve been trying to find that balance about getting both done at the same time and both complementing each other.”
Qualification for the British Olympic team is a process that Morgan admits even she doesn’t have fully figured out, but it will begin for her at the English championships in early March.
Then, if she qualifies, there could be an appearance for Morgan at the British championships in mid-March, and then possibly a trip to the European championships in May.
“I’m really excited,” she said. “For me, it is a little scary. It is a big decision I made. But this is meant to be fun. I’m doing this because I love gymnastics, I love to be challenged and I love to push myself.
“It is really exciting that I get to do this opportunity and that’s how I see it. I get to do this. No one is making me do this. I’m doing this for myself, to challenge myself. I really do (want) to enjoy this and have fun and not really worry about the pressures and stuff on the outside.”
If Morgan does end up being named to the British Olympic team, she will get to compete at a more normal Olympic Games in Paris than the one she experienced in Tokyo, which was marred by the pandemic.
Morgan’s experience in Tokyo informed her decision to return to the elite scene. And if she gets to compete in another Olympics, she plans on experiencing those things that she was denied an opportunity to do previously.
“I definitely did look back on Toyko a lot,” she said. “I reached the pinnacle. I got to an Olympic games, which was a dream come true. And then to medal was even more of a dream come true. Part of me was like, maybe I should just leave it at that.
“But at the same time, with COVID, it was a very strange Olympics, one that is going to go down in history. The fact that there is another opportunity to maybe, possibly compete in another Olympics where there are people there and you get to interact with other athletes and have the more normal Olympic experiences, I feel like I may as well take this opportunity.”
She continued, “I didn’t even go to the closing or opening ceremonies. Those traditional things you do when you go to the Olympics. I’ll be OK if it doesn’t work out and if I don’t go, but I would love to get the original Olympic experience.”
If she does, she will only etch her name a little bit more in British gymnastics history. Not that she needs to.