By Gabby Douglas’ comeback is over.
The 2012 Olympic champion returned to competition this spring after an almost eight-year absence, hoping to make the U.S. team for this summer’s Paris Games. But she told ESPN on Wednesday that she was withdrawing from this week’s national championships, citing an ankle injury.
“I love this sport and I love pushing my limits,” Douglas told ESPN. “I hope I can inspire both my peers and the next generation of gymnasts that age is just a number, and you can accomplish anything you work hard for.”
The announcement was not a complete surprise after Douglas scratched from the U.S. Classic on May 18 after one event. She’d hoped to improve on her first competition back, at the American Classic on April 27, and had looked better in training. But she fell twice on uneven bars, her signature event, and looked stone-faced as she came off the podium.
Douglas needed to score a 51 or higher at the U.S. Classic to qualify to do the all-around at the national championships, and her 10.1 on bars would have made that difficult. She had already qualified to do three events at nationals — vault, bars and balance beam — with her performance at the American Classic.
“I honestly didn’t do the best that I wanted,” Douglas said of the American Classic, which was her first competition since the Rio Olympics in 2016. “But I have to give myself a little grace because it’s been so long.”
Douglas is a three-time Olympic gold medalist, winning team golds in 2012 and 2016 in addition to her all-around title in London. She left the sport after Rio and said at the U.S. Classic she was “hating” gymnastics at the time. The first Black woman to win the Olympic all-around title, she was subjected to relentless criticism by fans in both 2012 and 2016. She was ridiculed for her hair and chastised for her demeanor during the national anthem, and there are still some fans who say, wrongly, that Douglas didn’t belong on the Rio team.
Douglas had the third-highest score in qualifying in Rio, behind Simone Biles and Aly Raisman, but didn’t make the all-around final because of the two-per-country limit. She had the second-highest score for the United States on uneven bars in both qualifying and team finals, and that event effectively ended any hope Russia had of catching the Americans.
“It ended rough for me in 2016,” Douglas said.
Though she didn’t officially retire, most assumed Douglas was done with the sport. But as she watched the national championships in 2022, she realized she missed gymnastics and wanted to end her career on her terms. Within a few months, there were rumors she was training at WOGA, the gym outside Dallas that’s owned by the parents of 2008 Olympic champion Nastia Liukin. Douglas confirmed it last July and began posting clips of herself in the gym.
“Regardless of the outcome, I want to make sure I end on love and joy instead of hating something that I love,” Douglas said.
Asked if she now felt that, Douglas responded, “I do! Yes, I do.”
But while she had a love for gymnastics again, Douglas simply didn’t have enough time. Doing routines in a competition is different than doing them during training, and two meets wasn’t going to be enough for Douglas after so much time away.
