Ellie Black was once a non-factor on the uneven bars. She now has a skill named after her.
The 28-year-old from Halifax will become the first Canadian to compete in artistic gymnastics in four Olympic Games when women’s qualification starts Sunday in Paris.
The uneven bars was once Black’s weakest apparatus. She reached her first world championship bars final last year to place eighth in Antwerp, Belgium, where she also ranked fifth in vault.
“In her first Olympics, she didn’t compete on the bars,” her coach David Kikuchi said. “The team didn’t want her to go anywhere near the bars.
“Bars has been a huge improvement over the years and now to be one of the best eight in the world in her worst event is amazing.”
A gymnast who performs an element that no one has ever done in high-level competition becomes eponymous with that skill.
In 2022, Black executed a release move in which she flies over the top bar and adds a half turn upon catching the bar again. The “Black” was subsequently added to the sport’s points code.
“It’s one of the hardest skills out there,” Kikuchi said. “She does it in combination with something else, so it’s really worth a lot of points, but it’s difficult.”
Black has also broken new ground with longevity in a sport that’s historically been one of women retiring in their teens.
The average age of all Canadian women who have competed in Olympic artistic gymnastics is just over 17. Black was already the oldest to do so at age 25 in Tokyo in 2021.
She’s among women driving a trend of contending for the international podium into their late twenties. Black turns 29 in September.
U.S. star and podium contender Simone Biles will be 27 in Paris. Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade, the 2022 world all-around champion, is 25.
“That’s making athletes and coaches rethink the way the sport of gymnastics was and what it can be,” Black said.
“Just because no one else has done it or it’s not very common for athletes to stay in their sport into their late twenties or thirties, why can’t you do that? Why can’t you do that and be successful and still be getting better?”
A 14-year-old Nadia Comaneci winning five Olympic medals in Montreal in 1976 drove for decades a women’s gymnastics model of pushing young girls hard to excel before their bodies changed.
“Shannon Miller being 19 years old, heading into the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, she was considered old. The narrative has completely changed,” said Kyle Shewfelt, who is Canada’s first and only artistic gymnast to win an Olympic medal with a floor exercise gold in 2004.
“Gymnastics isn’t just a sport anymore for little girls. Gymnastics is a women’s sport. You have these athletes who are looking for long-term careers and Simone and Ellie are two great examples.”
Black benefited from training at her hometown Alta Gymnastics club, where there were no other elite women for her to compare herself to, or be compared to.
“We weren’t pushed to try and peak for a certain age. We were always empowered to be strong and be healthy,” Black said.
“It was always conditioning my body to be as strong and as prepared as possible to handle the load that gymnastics puts through your body, and then not comparing your path or your journey to other people in the sport.”
She trained alongside men that Kikuchi coached. Men have a longer, slower horizon in artistic gymnastics because they spend their teens building the strength needed to execute skills.
“Her training style has always been different than the stereotypical high-level women’s gymnastics training regimen,” Kikuchi said.
“The hours are quite a bit less, the repetitions are quite a bit less, and there’s more time for recovery and more space for trust in her program and just knowing that she knows what to do and she’ll be able to do it when the time comes.”
Black was poised to win Canada’s first Olympic medal in women’s artistic gymnastics on the balance beam in Tokyo, but she injured her ankle while training there.
Her Plan B beam routine still put her in medal contention. The last competitor was Biles, who took the bronze medal ahead of Black in fourth.
“If this wasn’t the Olympics, there’s no way she would have tried to to compete,” Kikuchi said. “To have gone through that super-hard week and to compete in the final at the Olympics was one thing, but then to make her routine and do a great job of it . . . she got off the beam and came over and gave me a big hug and she was crying. She told me in that moment ‘I am so proud of myself.'”
Black is among a handful of athletes to achieve a career “gym slam”, which is reaching world championship finals on all four apparatus. She was the world championship’s all-around silver medallist in 2017.
Black earned a beam silver medal at the 2022 world championship in Liverpool, England, where she also led the Canadian women to team bronze.
The team’s early qualification for Paris gave Black a time cushion to have ankle surgery in early 2023, and then ease back into training for Antwerp’s world championships and the Olympic Games in Paris.
“Representing Canada at a fourth Olympic Games is also something to be super, incredibly proud of,” Black said. “To make one Olympic Games is incredibly hard and then to move onto two, three, four is something that’s really phenomenal.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 27, 2024.