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Alyssa Roenik, ESPN Senior Writer
The past and future of USA Gymnastics will collide Saturday in Hartford, Conn. The US Classic, the first step to this summer’s Olympic Trials in Minneapolis, features three past Olympic individual all-around winners Gabby Douglas, Simone Biles and Suni Lee as part of the most talented group of Olympic hopefuls in history. You will be competing with one of the following. . It’s a tournament full of storylines, but perhaps the most unexpected twist in the quad is Douglas’ return to competition.
Twelve years after becoming the first black gymnast to win an Olympic individual all-around title at the 2012 London Games and inspiring a generation of black girls to aspire to gymnastics’ elite, Douglas competed in Katy, Texas, in April. He returned to competition at the American Classic. Now 28, she has been erratic and inconsistent at times, and at other times ready to reclaim her Olympic spotlight.
In Katy, Douglas’ bar and beam difficulty scores were on par with the top gymnasts in the country, and she landed Yurchenko’s double vault better than ever. However, she twice came off the bar, landed low on beam dismount, and twice tumbling passes that sent her out of bounds, finishing 11th overall.
But no matter how this summer turns out, Douglas’ aim to make the Paris team is as much about her aspirations as it is about proving she’s one of the top five gymnasts in the country right now. He also says that it means ending his career as an athlete. Her return means more than that to the many young black women vying for coveted spots.
“When I see her on the podium, [in London], I thought, “Oh, I want to do that.” I want to go there someday,” 17-year-old Kariyah Lincoln said during national team camp earlier this year. “That moment inspired me.”
Twelve years ago, Lincoln saw Douglas’ victory in London and reset his own goals. More than a decade later, when she reached Olympic-eligible age in what was once defined as a youth sport, she never imagined she would be competing with Douglas for a spot on the 2024 Olympic team. Ta.
“Never in a million years did I think I would be playing against Gabby,” said Lincoln, who will share the floor with Douglas for the first time Saturday. “It’s unreal. Even after all these years, it’s really inspiring to see her passion and love for this sport.”
Until April, Douglas had not competed in elite gymnastics since the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, where she became the first individual all-around champion since Nadia Comaneci to win the title and return to the Olympics four years later. In Rio, Douglas helped the U.S. team win the team gold medal for the second year in a row, reaching the uneven bars final and finishing seventh.
Despite finishing third overall in the qualifying round, Douglas was unable to defend his individual all-around title due to the rule that only two participants per country could compete. Teammates Biles and Aly Raisman won gold and silver medals for the United States. Biles became the second Black woman and fifth American woman to win the individual all-around Olympic title.
Five years later, Lee became the first Hmong American and first Asian American to win at the postponed 2020 Tokyo Olympics. At the 2022 U.S. Championships, Conor McClain will lead the first trio of Black gymnasts to stand on the individual all-around podium, and at the 2023 World Championships in Antwerp, Belgium in October, Biles will lead the first three Black gymnasts in World Championship history. won the podium.
“I remember seeing Simone and thinking, ‘We did it,'” two-time world champion Series Jones said in Antwerp. Jones is the only woman to reach both podiums, and she won silver in the individual all-around at the 2022 U.S. Games and bronze at the 2023 World Games. She added, “It’s been a long time. Sometimes it feels like we’re in the shadows. This means so much to young girls and the Black community.”
Jones, who is a front-runner for the Paris squad, also believes Douglas’ victory in London changed the course of her career and life. “She watched the 2012 Olympics and thought, ‘This is where I want to be. I want to be Gabby Douglas,'” she said. “That’s when it hit me. I thought, ‘Wow, I can take this to the next level.'”
Jones, 21, began making plans. Three years later, at age 13, she persuaded her parents to move from her hometown of Seattle to Columbus, Ohio, where she joined Douglas in Buckeye gymnastics, where she practiced until the 2016 Olympics. I made it possible to practice with.
“I thought, ‘You’re elite now, but you need to train with other elites somewhere,'” Jones said. “That’s when I moved in and trained with Gabby. We became close and started to look at Olympic-style athletes differently.”
Skye Blakely, who is also a candidate for this summer’s Olympic team, was 8 years old when she watched Douglas walk to the top step of the Olympic podium and bow to win his first Olympic gold medal.
“She was black, she looked like me, and she was someone I could relate to. I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a possibility.'”
Skye Blakely
Blakely, 19, has trained at the World Olympic Gymnastics Academy in Texas throughout her career. The academy is the same gym where Olympic individual all-around champions Carly Patterson and Nastia Liukin once trained. She said she remembers hearing about their wins and watching replays of their performances on YouTube, but it didn’t affect her the way it did when Douglas won in London.
“I watched Gabby compete with my own eyes,” Blakely said. “She was black, she looked like me, and she was someone I could relate to. I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a possibility.’ It’s been my goal ever since to get there.” I thought, “I understand the plan, I understand the vision, and if I keep working, I can get there too.”
Douglas’ return to competition, along with two-time Olympian Biles, 27, in a discipline that could produce the first 20-and-over Olympic team in U.S. history, will once again put Douglas in the spotlight as an Olympic gymnast. Contributing to changing perceptions of what things are like.
“I’m only 17,” Lincoln says. “Right now, I feel like I have a lot of time left. It’s not like, ‘If I don’t do well this season, it’s over.'” I still have many years left in this sport. ”
Douglas once thought of his career that way, too. That’s why she never used the word “retirement” after Rio. But she knows this is the last round, so she’s trying to capture every moment along the way.
“Happy and grateful to be back on the floor doing what I love,” Douglas wrote on social media after his match against Katy. “As with anything, there are always going to be hiccups to train, improve, and get better. I’ve never been more excited to get back in the gym and work even harder… See you in Hartford .”
