The US women’s gymnast said she was “shocked” when coach Cecile Landi informed her she needed to step in for Simone Biles, who was withdrawing from Tuesday’s team competition.

“I was shocked. I was overwhelmed,” Chiles told NBC. “After she did her vault, Cecile came over and was like ‘Jordan put your grips on.’ I was in so much shock that I didn’t know if she was being serious or not. So I was just putting my grips on like ‘What am I doing?'”

The 20-year-old Oregon native acted as an emergency replacement for Biles, perhaps the most accomplished gymnast of all-time.

Biles pulled herself out of the event after a poor performance on the vault, citing mental health reasons.

Follow all the 2020 Olympics action

• Daily updated medal counts, full schedule and results, athlete bios and more
• Full Post coverage of the Games

Chiles performed in both the balance beam and uneven bars events to help the US land silver on the podium behind Russian Olympic Committee. 

Chile scored a solid 14.166 on the vault, despite it not being her strong suit, to keep the US in the running. Fellow teammate Suni Lee also stepped up with Biles out, doing the floor exercise on the competition’s final rotation.

“… In that moment, we’re all kind of like, panicking,” Chiles said. “But at the same time, we knew we had to put something together and calm ourselves down because we had a job to do.”

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Christopher Scarglato