Gabby Douglas’ rocky competitive return full of potential
Three-time Olympic gymnastics gold medallist Gabby Douglas took part in her first competition since the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio Saturday (27 April) at the American Classic, the first step in an improbable comeback aiming to make the 28-year-old the oldest U.S. women’s gymnast at the Games since at least 2004 when Annia Hatch and Mohini Bhardwaj, both then 26, competed.
It wasn't a fairytale beginning.
Douglas' debut was about as far from the powerful Olympic spotlight as it could get.
There were to be no bright lights, no television cameras, and only a few dozen fans on hand inside Stars Gymnastics, a training facility located in Katy, Texas.
A quiet return, to say the least, for Douglas, whose career has been defined by rising to the occasion.
At her first Games at London 2012, inconsistencies during the selection process vanished by the time she arrived in England, soaring to the all-around crown – a first for an African American woman.
She returned competition in 2015 and finished runner-up in the all-around at the World Championships to superstar Simone Biles.
Her return at Rio 2016 made her the first reigning Olympic all-around champion to return to the Games since Nadia Comaneci won in 1976 and competed four years later. Douglas helped her U.S. squad to a second-straight team title there.
But making her first competitive appearance in nearly a decade in a training gym, one she had been in before when she attended a national team camp there in November, it seemed like Douglas couldn’t channel her adrenaline to overcome the nerves of her highly anticipated debut.
Seconds into Douglas’ first routine Saturday, she had fallen after coming up short on her opening tumbling pass on the floor exercise, a front full through to double back. Her second pass, a full-in, bounced out of the area, incurring a .3 penalty, while her final tumbling pass, a double pike had a large step out of bounds for another .1 deduction.
Her final score was 11.450.
She would later come off the uneven bars twice, missing a Jaeger release move first and then going the wrong way on a cast handstand for an 11.850.
Douglas closed out her competition with a solid, but not perfect, effort on the balance beam. She scored 13.350, fifth on the event.
Still, there were moments of trademark Gabby Douglas brilliance, too.
On vault, Douglas boomed a Yurchenko double twist so high, so clean, so controlled that overlaying it with footage from the Rio Games, where she finished third in the all-around during qualifying but missed the final as the third best American, might be indistinguishable. Her 14.000 mark was second to all-around winner Jade Carey, the Tokyo 2020 floor gold medallist.
During the warm-up for the competition, Douglas looked solid on the uneven bars, as well.
She performed her difficult opening pirouetting and release sequence cleanly, before executing a stalder full pirouette and a stalder to piked Tkatchev (Downie) to Pak combination. She finished the routine up with a stalder Shaposhnikova half and a double layout dismount.
The tumbling passes that gave her trouble in the opening rotation also looked easy in the pre-meet warm-up.
Though she finished 11th overall with a 50.650 score, .350 shy of the 51.000 score needed to qualify to the U.S. championships, Douglas did secure a three-event qualifying total and will have another chance to qualify for all four apparatus at next month’s U.S. Classic (17-18 May) in Hartford, Connecticut.
The next 21 days will be crucial for Douglas.
She will need to draw on her supreme talent and immense experience and put in the work over the next three weeks to find a way to put the puzzle pieces of greatness she clearly has together consistently in Hartford and beyond.
If anyone can do it, it’s Douglas.