“It’s something I’ll never forget,” says the 20-year-old Moors, who trains at Dynamo Gymnastics with coach Denis Vachon. “I really enjoyed the feeling of being in an event like that, it’s so inspiring. I think it left a mark on me.”
Moors knew the journey her sister had travelled to become an Olympic athlete and understood the road that lay ahead for her.
“We were always training together when we were young,” said Moors. “It was difficult. For me, it was more just watching her go through the process, watching her experiences leading up to it and how amazing it was when she went. And even after, what an achievement it really was.
“Just watching her really set a spark.”
Inspired by her sister, Moors has competed at three World Championships and won the floor exercise gold medal at both the 2019 Pan American Games and 2017 Pan American Championships, but has never lost sight of her Olympic goal.
“I’ve always wanted to go to the Olympics, even since I was super young,” she said. “After I got to watch her, it really set my mind on it. It was a hard process but that really encouraged me.”
Moors’ specialty is the floor exercise. At her first World Championships in 2017, she won the Longines Prize for Elegance and finished fifth in the finals in front of the Canadian crowd in Montreal.
“I didn’t have a lot of hard skills when I was young,” she said. “I just had to be really clean and worked on my execution and presentation. I learned how to perform.”
Like a mechanic tinkering on a race car, Moors is constantly fine-tuning and adjusting her routine.
“It takes a long time to make the routine in the first place, then pretty much every day we will change something,” she said.
Moors had planned to attend UCLA last fall on a gymnastics scholarship. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and the Tokyo Games were delayed a year, Moors decided to put school on hold to concentrate on training.
Things were further complicated by a back injury that sidelined her for eight months and kept her from training until March.
“Things turned upside down,” she said. “A lot did happen this year personally and physically. I really wasn’t sure if I’d be able to keep going. I was barely allowed to condition or anything.”
The back injury has now reached a point where it’s manageable.
“I get a lot of treatment so it’s doing much better,” she said.
“This year I’ve grown as a person, so it’s been a good year for growth.”
Moors’ Olympic dream will become a reality when she hits the floor at the Ariake Gymnastics Centre for the women’s artistic gymnastics qualifiers on July 25th. The artistic gymnastics competition will run until August 3rd.
READ BROOKLYN’S BIO WITH FULL RESULTS HERE: http://gymcan.org/disciplines/womens-artistic-gymnastics/national-teams/brooklyn-moors