Gabby Douglas returned to training about a year ago after six years away from competition and said she loves gymnastics, or at least training.
The 2012 Olympic individual all-around gold medalist has been named to be one of the five women’s representatives for the 2024 Olympics, which will be decided in June.
“I missed hearing the sounds of devices flying through the air and connecting different types of movements,” she said. “This Week’s Time Person” Podcast Released on Thursdaysis believed to be the first published interview of her return.
Douglas last competed in Rio in 2016, where she won her second consecutive team gold medal. She then quit the sport.
“I’ve been through so much,” she said, referring specifically to what she called the “controversy” surrounding her selection to the 2016 five-woman team.
Douglas struggled in the national championships, finishing fourth in the individual all-around at the 2016 U.S. Championships and seventh at the Olympic Trials.
Teams are not directly selected based on their performance, but are determined through a selection committee. In her corner is her experience, strong 2015 season (silver medal at the World Individual All-Around despite her knee injury) and her prowess on the uneven bars, a relatively weak instrument for the United States. Ta.
Still, Douglass was aware of the criticism.
“I had to deal with feeling like I didn’t deserve to be on that team,” Douglas said.
Her mother, Natalie Hawkins, said external negativity carried over through the Rio Games.
“I know it’s not everything in the world, but in a way it felt like it was everything in the world,” she said in December 2016. “We couldn’t continue to feed her time without seeing only the most hateful, most disgusting things.”
Douglas called this a “backlash” and said there was “more going on behind the scenes that people don’t know about.”
I was like, “Okay, I need to take a break for myself and completely take a step back and work on myself because it took a lot out of me physically, mentally and emotionally.” she said. “So I thought, I’m never going to see a leotard, and I’m never going to touch a gym.”
So why did they make a comeback?
“I didn’t want to bring any hate towards the sport I love,” she said. “I don’t want it to end that way. She never announced her retirement. It was always in the back of her mind that it had to end in a better way.”
Douglas, who turns 28 on New Year’s Eve, has not announced what his first meeting in return will be.
Some elite gymnasts are expected to compete in the Winter Cup in late February. The Olympic selection season begins in earnest with the U.S. Classic in May.
“I’m so grateful for my body and so grateful that I can still go out on the floor and do what I love,” she said.