Gabby Douglas Biography

Born to Timothy Douglas and Natalie Hawkins Douglas in Virginia on December 31, 1995, Gabby has three older siblings - two sisters and a brother. Gabby began showing inclination towards Gymnastics at a very young age and her surprisingly flexible body encouraged her parents to consider training her in gymnastics.

Gabby began her training at the age of 6 when her elder sister pushed her parents to enrol Gabby in the gymnastic classes. Gabby began her hardcore gymnastic training at the age of 6 in October 2004, which proved to be the stepping stone in her future career as a successful gymnast.

It wasn’t long after that when Gabby started participating in the competitions and started exhibiting her unique high flying skills to the awe of judges and the spectators. At a mere age of 8, Gabby surprised everyone by winning an all round competition in 2004, at Virginia State Championships.

Her parents, extremely confident with the superior talent her daughter possessed, allowed her to move to Iowa for her further training under the guidance of Coach Liang Chow. Gabby stayed with her aunt and trained hard and even now, she considers that particular period of time as the stepping stone of her professional career, and that was when she was just fourteen.

In her first national debut Gabby secured the 10th place at the US Classic held in Houston in 2008, and performed quite average in a few subsequent competitions that year. Throughout the next year, Douglas suffered from injuries and was away from most of the major competitions. The year 2010, was also not quite remarkable one for her except for the U.S. Junior National Championships, where she secured a silver medal. Later that year, she suffered from an injury and took the time to sharpen her bar skills, which her coach said was her sole weakness.

She tasted success at the senior level with a gold medal in City of Jesolo Trophy which she won along with her teammates and later that year, at the World Championship 2011, held in Tokyo, she and her teammates secured the gold medal.

Post her magnificent victory at the Olympics, she went back to Chow for training and by the end of the year, she was training under a new coach Kittia Carpenter. For the most part of 2013, and 2014, she stayed away from the competitions and used the time to further hone her skills.

She made a comeback with participating in the City of Jesolo Trophy in 2015, and was placed 4th in all around championship and 2nd in overall U.S. Classics games. Her performance was lauded and she got drafted to the senior national team and soon, her fate allowed her to secure the second spot in 2015 World Artistic Gymnastic Championship held in Glasgow, Scotland.

A spot in the 2016 Olympics was secured by her despite her being placed at 7th spot in the Olympic trials. But she didn’t disappoint and played a massive role in the gold medal victory for the US team. Her individual events performance wasn’t up to the mark as she ended up with 7th spot in the uneven bars final and was disqualified from the all around event due to some complex rules.

All the years she’s been in limelight, Gabby has faced severe criticism due to the accusations of bleaching her skin to look fair, her hairstyle and her breast enhancement treatment along with her ‘unpatriotic’ behaviour at international events. However, Gabby has denied the accusations but all these controversies had a toll on her emotional and psychological health