Gabby Douglas

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

Gabby, along with her mother, produced a film based on her life, for the Lifetime Channel. She was just 20 years old then. Gabby has, in fact, maintained that she is inspired by the glamour world and as a result, her own reality TV show came into existence, by the name ‘Douglas Family Gold’.

Born to Timothy Douglas and Natalie Hawkins Douglas in Virginia on 31st December 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 six when her elder sister pushed her parents to enrol Gabby in the gymnastic classes. Gabby began her hardcore gymnastic training at a mere age of six 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 14.

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.

Her victory at the 2012 Olympic trials secured her a place in the national team for the 2012 Summer Olympics to be held in London.

She grabbed the attention of national team’s coordinator Martha Karoyli, who nicknamed her ‘Flying Squirrel’ due to Gabby’s exquisite high flying skills. Later in the Summer Olympics 2012, the gold was secured by the US team of which Gabby was 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 a 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 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.

In 2012, Gabby became the fourth Gymnast in the American history to be honoured with the Associated Press’s award ‘Female Athlete of the Year’. Next year, she was the recipient of two BET award for her accomplishments in the sport.