Gabby's big goal in Rio

Olympic Games Gymnastics : Coping with fame and battling injury, the first black ever to win the all-around title is eyeing a repeat

To start her final push to the Rio Olympics, Gabby Douglas -- the defending Olympic gymnastics champion in the all-around -- will pack her bags and head to Sam Houston National Forest, about 65 miles north of Houston, for a nine-day boot camp.

OK, it's technically not a boot camp. On paper, it's actually an official pre-Olympics training camp at Martha and Bela Karolyi's ranch, a gymnastics enclave reached by gravel-and-dirt roads in the middle of the woods, and it's for the five women and three alternates who will head to Brazil in two weeks.

There will be no reporters. No agents. No sponsors or family. It's exactly what Douglas needs: a quiet and focused chance to rediscover the original Gabby Douglas, and what got her to the top in the first place. And that was not her marketability as a charismatic, upbeat woman who was the first black gymnast to win the Olympic all-around.
It was her gymnastics.

"Just put me to work," Douglas said a day after Martha Karolyi, the national team coordinator, named her to her second Olympic team. "I can do this. I'm not going to let myself go out like this, for it all to end like this."

After falling off the balance beam on both days of the Olympic trials, Douglas barely made the team for Rio. She finished seventh in the all-around, and that relatively poor finish prompted some fans to wonder why Karolyi would take a chance on her, especially with the Olympics so near.

What saved Douglas, though, was that Ashton Locklear, the gymnast with whom she was competing for the team's final spot because both are uneven-bars specialists, does not compete in the floor exercise or the vault. Douglas does.

The team needed Douglas in the uneven bars in the team event, and at least on the vault in the qualifying for the team event, said Karolyi, who added that she would personally shape up Douglas for Rio. "She was a little bit off in her training, and I don't know exactly the reason, maybe the coaching situation," Karolyi said. "But I'm pretty confident that all of these things will go in a good direction and we can work it out. Certainly, she hasn't performed to her potential."

Karolyi knows what Douglas can do. Anyone who has watched Douglas compete has seen a glimpse of it.

The original Gabby Douglas became an unexpected Olympic champion four years ago, after her coach, Liang Chow, transformed her from an average national team member to one who soared to the top of her sport. Douglas was 16, a chatty and bubbly and joyful teenager tucked into a tiny, lithe but powerful body. When she won the gold, she broke a barrier, and that was when everything stopped being completely about gymnastics for Douglas.

Her new fame led to a book and a made-for-TV movie, but also to a rash of coaching changes and at least one cross-country move — little of it escaping the eyes of her 827,000 Twitter followers. And therein is the good and the bad of a gymnast trying to rebound from stardom, back into the gym. When Douglas was 16, her life was all about gymnastics. At 20, it's become much more complicated.

In some ways, it's amazing that Douglas even made it to trials.
After taking more than a year off from gymnastics after the London Olympics, Douglas left Chow's gym in Iowa not once, but twice, to live and train in Southern California, where her entire family moved into a 7,000-plus-square-foot house after Douglas won the gold medal. Two years ago, Douglas moved back east to Ohio to train under Kittia Carpenter at Buckeye Gymnastics after at least three other coaches refused to coach her after her breakup with Chow. (Just before trials, Douglas switched coaches again, choosing Christian Gallardo, an assistant at Buckeye, over Carpenter.)

But the turmoil in the gym was soon matched by new distractions outside it. Finally training in one spot at Buckeye, Douglas chipped at her focus anew last year when she was featured on a reality programme called "Douglas Family Gold," taping the six episodes at a time when most of her rivals were focused solely on training.

Douglas' mother and business manager, Natalie Hawkins, who is in charge of what can loosely be described as Gabby Inc., said the show fit seamlessly into Douglas' days, and that it actually helped Douglas relax. Hawkins said last week that she was hoping the show would be awarded a second season.

But what few outside the Douglas family circle knew was that on top of everything else pulling at Douglas, she was nursing a serious injury, which was only revealed by Hawkins after Douglas was safely on the Olympic team.

Going into the world championships in October, Douglas had injured her knee while vaulting. It was such a serious injury that Douglas spent three months on crutches after the worlds, Hawkins said. USA Gymnastics confirmed the injury but said Douglas had been on crutches for only about eight weeks.

Douglas, who overcame the pain to finish second behind Simone Biles in the all-around at the worlds, said she had wanted to talk about the injury publicly but "just couldn't." Her mother said that silence was a way to protect Douglas. "We haven't spoken about them publicly because we needed her to focus on what she needed to do, instead of having to answer questions," Hawkins said. "It takes energy out of her."

That is what makes Douglas' comeback to make the Olympic team more remarkable. There is still much at stake, though, and not just for Douglas.  If you are a company planning a marketing campaign, it helps to sponsor a current Olympian, not a former one.
Mattel, one of her sponsors, was most likely happy that Douglas made the team, too. It created a special Gabby Douglas Barbie doll and unveiled it a day after she made the team. Right now, though, there are no plans to mass-produce the Gabby Barbie, said Marissa Beck, a Mattel spokeswoman.

"Sometimes they go into production, sometimes they don't," Beck said. "You never know."

That decision will be just one more thing on Douglas' shoulders as she heads to Rio. But she must rid her mind of all of that noise now. Between days one and two of the Olympic trials, she acknowledged as much.

"I just really believe that I just spent a lot of time focusing on the wrong things," she said with a frown, explaining that she had felt lost. But there is so much hope for Douglas. Entering the bubble of training camp in the Texas woods, she has nine days to find her way.