What was gabby douglas childhood like

And this girl performed quite average in a few subsequent competitions that year. The next year, Douglas suffered from injuries and was away from most of the major competitions. The year was also not quite a remarkable one for her except for the U. Junior National Championships. She secured a silver medal. Later that year, she suffered from an injury and took the time to sharpen her bar skills.

She tasted success at the senior level with a gold medal in the City of Jesolo Trophy. Later that year, at the World Championship held in Tokyo, she and her teammates secured the gold medal.

Who is Erin Olash? Her victory at the Olympic trials secured her a place in the national team for the Summer Olympics to be held in London. Later in the Summer Olympics , the gold secured by the US team of which Gabby an integral part, but she returned empty-handed in most of the individual events. However, she won a gold medal in the individual all-around competition and she achieved celebrity status in the United States. Post her magnificent victory at the Olympics, she went back to Chow for training and by the end of the year.

She trained under a new coach Kittie Carpenter. For the most part of and , she stayed away from the competitions and used the time to further hone her skills. She made a comeback by participating in the City of Jesolo Trophy in and placed 4th in the all-around championship and 2nd in overall U.

Classics games. She was six when she began gymnastics training. At age 14 she moved to Iowa to train full-time. She went on to win many competitions and championships.

Gabby Douglas was the only competitor at the Olympics to qualify for the beam finals, bars, and individual all-around in her prelim performances.

Louis All-Around Bronze St. Paul Uneven Bars Bronze St. Louis Floor Exercise. Douglas celebrating with the other Final Five members at the Olympics Games. All content from Kiddle encyclopedia articles including the article images and facts can be freely used under Attribution-ShareAlike license, unless stated otherwise.

Cite this article:. This page was last modified on 16 July , at Classic in Chicago. She had a chance to shine before a huge audience at the national championships that August, but she did not shine. As she started doing her beam dismount -- two back handsprings into a double back flip off -- she freaked out and stopped in the middle.

Balking is a great way to hurt yourself:. She got back on the beam to try again, and balked again. She finally made it on the third try. She was written off because national team coordinator Marta Karolyi does not trust gymnasts who freak out on beam.

Yet somehow, after going to a few national training camps, Douglas was named to the world championship team. There she competed her bar routine, and made it to finals. She tied for fifth after hitting her feet on the low bar. But Douglas was getting her confidence back. She placed fifth in the all-around in prelims, but wasn't able to compete in finals, because two of her American teammates qualified ahead of her. Only two per country were allowed to compete.

Sound familiar? In , Douglas's first big meet was the American Cup, where she was the alternate, meaning she got to compete but her scores didn't count.