Gymnastics—like diving and determine skating—is an Olympic sport the place artistry and aesthetics are intertwined with athleticism. As Simone Biles and her teammates catapult and contort their our bodies this month in Paris, they’ll be doing so in leotards embellished with roughly 10,000 diamond-shaped Swarovski crystals. (That’s almost 2,000 greater than Crew USA wore again in Tokyo in 2021.) Sporting the uniforms to compete is the final step in a course of that took 4 years and greater than 50 individuals to finish.
“After I opened up the Olympic leotards, my first thought was that they have been completely beautiful,” Jade Carey, an Olympic gold medalist and 2024 Paris Crew USA gymnast, tells SELF. Carey, Biles, Jordan Chiles, Sunisa Lee, and Hezley Rivera, unboxed their new leotards, which have been made by gymnastics attire firm GK Elite, earlier this month. “They’re stuffed with crystals, tremendous patriotic, and actually lovely,” Carey says. “I am unable to wait to see how they shine below the lights within the enviornment.”
GK Elite
For Jeanne Diaz, GK Elite’s director of design, and Erica Schnebel, the corporate’s director of selling, it was a robust second. “I am getting chills nonetheless fascinated by it,” Schnebel tells SELF. “As they began opening it, I’m watching their faces, I’m watching their reactions, and I feel, exterior of their pleasure, one factor that struck me was Jeanne’s response—I seemed over and he or she’s bawling pleased tears as a result of that’s her work coming to life,” Schnebel says. “This can be a workforce of athletes we all know rather well and couldn’t have been prouder of every of them.”
How one can make a leotard with 10,000 crystals for the perfect gymnasts on this planet
Diaz notes that every leotard is crafted, in the beginning, with performance in thoughts, which begins with intel from the specialists themselves. She says that GK Elite polls USA Gymnastics members on what options—from necklines to materials to the quantity of glitz—they’ve most loved, or maybe disliked, in earlier uniforms. Nonetheless, as Diaz says, there aren’t normally many surprises. That’s as a result of the corporate has suited up Olympic gymnasts since 1996, so after virtually three a long time, they’ve a fairly good thought of what works and what doesn’t.
GK Elite
GK Elite
One other means to make sure the leotards assist, reasonably than hinder, efficiency? They’re every custom-made. “We make a leotard for each athlete that was competing on the Olympic trials, and we’ve all their sizing forward of time,” Diaz explains, including that every garment is laser-cut for tremendous exact measurements. (Principally, they’re meant to really feel like a second pores and skin.)
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