PARIS — As U.S. rhythmic gymnast Evita Griskenas finished her final routine at the 2024 Olympics on Thursday, her emotions rushed to the surface.
The gratitude. The relief. The pride. The exhaustion.
It has been a difficult journey for the 23-year-old Orland Park resident, the only American competing in rhythmic gymnastics at these Games. In the past year alone, she has nursed a broken foot, earned an Ivy League degree and become a two-time Olympian.
“It means I’m living in an answered prayer,” Griskenas said through tears after the competition. “Many answered prayers.”
Griskenas finished 18th in the individual all-around qualifying round and did not make the cut for Friday’s final. Her results, however, don’t reflect the arduous route — or, more accurately, flight path – she took to get here.
The daughter of Lithuanian immigrants, she trained for the 2024 Games in suburban Chicago while simultaneously earning a psychology degree from Columbia University in New York. The arrangement required her to fly between the two cities each week, racking up airline miles while balancing the demands of being a world-class athlete with the academic load of an Ivy League student.
In a typical semester, Griskenas would catch the first flight to New York on Monday, spend three days attending the classes on her stacked schedule and then return home Wednesday afternoon for four-and-a-half days of training at Sachs Recreation Center in Deerfield. On Monday mornings, she would leave her parents’ house before dawn and start the commute all over again.
“I try not to look at my carbon footprint,” she said before arriving in Paris.
For an elite rhythmic gymnast, Griskenas’ schedule was one of necessity. Unlike many U.S. Olympians, there are very few places in the country where she can train. It’s not an NCAA sport like swimming, rowing, wrestling or fencing, so there are no facilities or coaches for her at Columbia.
Her sport’s American epicenter is in suburban Deerfield, where the North Shore Rhythmic Gymnastics Center rents park district space to train the country’s best. For the past three Summer Games, the entire U.S. rhythmic gymnastics team — for both individual and team competitions — has come from the program.
The facility has a so-called podium floor for rhythmic gymnastics, which is thinner and has less spring than those used by artistic gymnasts. Identical to the floors used in international competition, it’s better for balancing and turning.
“So the thing with rhythmic is that I could not leave my coach,” she said. “We have the best gym in the country in terms of location, space, ceiling, floor. Our floor is critical to being a healthy rhythmic gymnast. You can try to train on other surfaces, but it’s not very doable.”
Griskenas began college during the pandemic, which made her life as a student-athlete somewhat easier. When her school reverted to remote learning during the fall and spring semesters, Griskenas listened to lectures each morning before practice, then again during breaks.
A couple of times a week, her mother drove the 90-minute commute to Deerfield so Griskenas could attend classes over Zoom from the car. She finished her freshman year, remotely, while competing in Uzbekistan.
When in-person classes resumed after the Tokyo Olympics — where Griskenas finished 12th — she began splitting her time between New York and Chicago. Some questioned whether she could be both an athlete and academic, but she insisted it could be done and received a grant from the Women’s Sport Foundation to help cover the costs.
“I had the extreme support of my family and from select friends at Columbia,” she said. “But I’ll just say that I faced a lot of resistance from a lot of different areas. I had to prove myself.”
On the days she was at school, Griskenas would do cross-training and endurance workouts such as high-intensity intervals, pilates and swimming. Back home, she lived with her parents in the southwest suburbs and trained the typical five-to-10 hours a day for a rhythmic gymnast.
She memorized airline schedules, got to be on a first-name basis with flight crews and learned how to arrive at the gate before the doors closed. And she experienced every kind of travel disruption possible.
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“If there is a reason a flight can be delayed, I’ve been through it. Especially in the winter,” she said. “One time, I had three flights canceled in a single day.”
Traveling became even more difficult after she broke her foot in May 2023 and ended up in a walking boot months later after it didn’t heal properly. She spent most of the winter navigating Columbia’s campus on a knee scooter.
“I don’t recommend that in New York in the winter,” she said.
When her foot healed, she perfected four new routines — one for each of her apparatuses: hoop, ball, clubs and ribbon — before returning to international competition.
Earlier this spring, Griskenas took her final exams two weeks early so she could compete at the World Challenge Cup in Portugal. After finishing 17th, she flew back to New York and landed in time to attend a small graduation ceremony for first-generation, low-income students that day.
Columbia canceled its main graduation because of protests over the war in Gaza this year, but Griskenas said she was able to participate in ceremonies for both her department and the children of immigrants.
“Even I’m surprised with what I’ve accomplished,” she said, laughing. “Of course, you meet other athletes and regardless of what their path is, everyone puts in some kind of a crazy sacrifice financially, physically, emotionally. You name it, people have done it. I think athletes in general are just a very driven group of people.”
Griskenas, however, is not done — with school or rhythmic gymnastics.
She is looking at sports psychology or neuropsychology Ph.D. programs closer to home, but she hasn’t applied anywhere yet. The decision on where to continue her studies, she said, “is a post-Paris problem.”
She also intends to compete at the 2028 Olympics Games in Los Angeles, which would make her the country’s first rhythmic gymnast to compete in three Olympics.
“I’m hungry — and not for food,” she said after finishing her last routine. “I want more.”