Additional photos of Gabrielle Douglas

U.S. gymnast Gabrielle Douglas performs on the balance beam during the artistic gymnastics women's individual all-around competition at the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Photos: Gabrielle Douglas wins Gymnastic All-Around Title

LONDON (AP) — Make it a pair of golds for Gabby Douglas, who added the all-around title to the one she won with the U.S. team two nights ago.
Douglas became the third straight American to win gymnastics’ biggest prize, taking the lead on the very first event Thursday night and never really letting anyone else get close. She finished with a score of 62.232, less than three-tenths ahead of Viktoria Komova of Russia.
Douglas brought the house down with her energetic floor routine, and U.S. teammates Jordyn Wieber, McKayla Maroney and Kyla Ross jumped to their feet and cheered when she finished. Douglas flashed a smile and coach Liang Chow lifted her off the podium.

Gabrielle Douglas of the United States of America competes on the vault in the Artistic Gymnastics Women's Individual All-Around final on Day 6 of the London 2012 Olympic Games at North Greenwich Arena on August 2, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)

Gymnastics - Smiles for Douglas, tears for Komova

LONDON (Reuters) - The ear-to-ear smile of 16-year-old American Gabby Douglas and the tears of Russian Victoria Komova told the story of Olympic triumph and heartbreak in the women's all-around gymnastics on Thursday.

As Douglas waved presidentially to family, friends and team mates cheering her coronation as the new first lady of gymnastics, Komova slumped into a chair and pressed her hands to her face to try to stem the tears that flowed for the loss of the gold medal.

Not satisfied with silver, world champion Komova removed the medal from around her neck between leaving the awards ceremony and getting to the exit door of North Greenwich Arena's competition hall.

"It was too heavy," she told waiting reporters via a translator, saying the medal had been consigned to the pocket of her red-and-white track suit.

Douglas, meanwhile, had barely stopped grinning since the giant scoreboard suspended in the middle of North Greenwich Arena had flashed up her new status.

"It just feels amazing to be called the Olympic champion; I'm so honoured to be named that," said the talkative teenager dubbed the "Flying Squirrel" for the shape she makes on her favourite apparatus, the asymmetric bars.

Douglas bounced down from the floor with a huge smile after finishing the evening with a storming routine which had the crowd clapping along. Komova, last up, thought she had done enough to overhaul the American but the scoreboard showed otherwise.

A tiebreak settled the bronze medal, with Russian Aliya Mustafina far happier with her lot than Komova after beating American Aly Raisman on a tally of their best three of the four apparatus scores.

In the space of five months, Douglas has upset the gymnastics order in the world and at home. Allowed to compete unofficially at the American Cup in March, she outscored all the established women. In the U.S. trials last month, she pipped world all-around champion Jordyn Wieber to top spot for London.

Wieber, who came to London with high hopes, was reduced to a spectator on Thursday even though she had the fourth-best qualifying score for the final. With Douglas and Raisman above her, she fell foul of a rule that states that no country can put more than two gymnasts into the all-around.

VAULT LANDING

With Wieber out, Komova, who took silver behind the American at last October's world championships in Tokyo, went into Thursday's event confident that she could get a gold to make up for Russia's second place behind the U.S. in the team event - another outcome that produced a flood of tears.

Douglas, though, led from the start with a bit of luck on the vault. Though she hopped sideways slightly on landing, all her rivals did worse, with Komova ending up right off the mat.

Raisman banged her foot on one of the asymmetric bars, slipped to fifth place and began to look worried but, with Douglas and Komova clearly duelling for the gold, she got a sliver of bronze hope when her group progressed to the beam.

Mustafina, the 2010 world all-around champion, fell after attempting a twisting somersault and wobbled through the rest of the routine, looking miserable as she dismounted and scoring a low 13.633.

Raisman knew she could seize the upper hand but it was not to be. She managed to just save herself from toppling off the end of the beam, then wobbled badly on a spin.

In the final floor exercise, world bronze medallist Raisman outscored Mustafina but not by enough. The two women finished on equal points and the tiebreak rule gave the bronze to Mustafina.

The Russian, who has come back from knee surgery last year, can go home and compare her bronze medal with the one won by her father, Farhat Mustafin, who collected his for Greco-Roman wrestling at the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

China's Deng Linlin and Huang Quishuang finished sixth and seventh respectively, while Romanian team bronze medallist Sandra Izbasa was fifth despite the day's best score on the floor.

Hannah Whelan, competing at her home Olympics, ended the day in tears and in last place after falling face-first from the vault on her third rotation and getting a zero score.

The day, though, belonged entirely to Douglas, with her coach Liang Chow basking in more Olympic success after helping Shawn Johnson to win all-around silver at the Beijing Games.

U.S. team co-ordinator Marta Karolyi confessed that, 10 days ago, she had harboured serious doubts about Douglas's ability to compete because she was not concentrating.

"I talked to Chow and said: 'We have to address that. Have a good talk with her, we have to turn her around because she's going in the wrong direction.' She just wasn't able to focus so much.

"We addressed that with her and she reacted very nicely and next day she worked excellent and everything went in a straight line from there."

Whatever Karolyi and Chow said to the teenager, it worked. If Douglas keeps her focus, she could collect more gold in the finals of the asymmetric bars and the beam on Monday and Tuesday. London, it seems, has not seen the last of that smile just yet.

(Additional reporting by Steve Keating and Annika Breidthard; Editing by Pritha Sarkar)

Gabby Douglas: Hope and inspiration for black girls everywhere

My first thought after learning that Gabby Douglas had won the gold medal in the women’s individual all-around, was that my 5-year-old self would have idolized her.

Growing up, I always liked to watch the Olympics sports that required megawatt smiles, tight outfits and copious amounts of hair glitter. This meant that I spent hours marveling at the acrobatic feats of extremely talented white girls.

I don’t begrudge this. (Shannon Miller forever!).

But it was vaguely dispiriting. As someone who can barely touch her toes, I knew a gymnastics career was not in my destiny. But I liked watching the sport and yet, it seemed like something black girls just didn’t do. Black girls did track. White girls did gymnastics. That was the unspoken binary at every Summer Olympic games, at least according to the images that graced our television screens.

It didn’t even matter that this binary wasn’t strictly true. Amy Chow and Dominique Dawes (Asian American and black respectively) were a part of the Magnificent Seven, the 1996 gymnastics team that took gold in Atlanta. Still, no doubt because of the fact that black women tend to be branded as strong and masculine (see: the Williams sisters), the overt femininity of gymnastics seemed off-limits to chocolate girls.

As the first black woman to win an individual gold medal in gymnastics, Douglas is a quiet refutation of that trope. She’s not merely good (for a black gymnast). She’s the best.

Every time I watch Douglas — skin as dark as mine, nose as broad — I feel intensely, irrationally proud.

She’s filling hundreds of black girls all over the country with inspiration, giving them permission to dream.

It’s silly that it matters.

But it does.

Gabrielle Douglas wins London 2012 gymnastics all-around gold

An exhilarating and exuberant performance from Gabrielle Douglas made her a thoroughly popular all-around champion here on Thursday and ensured that the USA would have their third consecutive Olympic champion in the blue riband event of women's gymnastics. Douglas prevailed in a tight contest with the Russian favourite, Viktoria Komova, which came down to the very final floor routine.

Britain's Rebecca Tunney finished 13th after a charismatic showing but there was desperate disappointment for Hannah Whelan, whose vault score was wiped after she fell face down on landing. With no score at all given, Whelan finished in last place.

She was distraught after the vault, and neither she nor Tunney could withhold their emotions as they left the arena. "I think I just had a bit too much adrenaline," said a tearful Whelan, reflecting on her mistake. "I ran too fast, ended up too close to the board, didn't really take off in the right place so I didn't have any push coming off the board.

Whirlwind awaits Douglas, gymnastics' newest queen

By NANCY ARMOUR

The Associated Press

LONDON — 

Too excited to sleep and too early to wander the Olympic village, Gabby Douglas messaged her family and asked if they could have a video chat.

When her mom turned on the computer, there sat her daughter, eyes wide, hands on her cheeks, mouth agape.

"It reminded me of Macaulay Culkin in 'Home Alone,'" said Natalie Hawkins, Douglas' mother.

And this was before the 16-year-old Olympic all-around champion got her own cereal box cover, hobnobbed with Matt, Al and others at NBC's "Today" show, and had tweet-happy celebrities eager to be her new BFFs.

"It's pretty exciting," Douglas said Friday. "It really hasn't hit me yet."

Apparently not. She forgot to bring her gold medal with her for the rounds of meet and greet.

Hang on, kid, this is only the warm-up.

The Olympic all-around title is gymnastics' biggest prize, and it can turn a sprite into an international superstar overnight. The world is still on a first-name basis with Nadia and Mary Lou, and Gabby could wind up being bigger than both of them.

Swimming - Flying Squirrel Douglas ready to take off

(Reuters) - When Gabby Douglas arrived at the London Olympics all she wanted to do was meet Usain Bolt.

But after the 16-year-old American added the Olympic all-round title to her gymnastics team gold on Thursday, it might be the world's fastest man seeking a meeting with her.

Dressed in a shimmering pink leotard, Douglas dazzled a packed North Greenwich Arena with her cheeky personality and a jaw-dropping exhibition of high-flying acrobatics that heralded the arrival of the London Games newest sensation.

By the time Douglas was wrapping up her evening with a floor routine, the gymnast nicknamed the "Flying Squirrel" had the massive crowd on its feet and eating out of her hand, finishing with a playful wave before diving into the arms of her coach Liang Chow.

"It just feels amazing to be called the Olympic champion, so much hard work, effort and passion and determination in the gym," Douglas told reporters after claiming gymnastics biggest prize. "You have to push it every day. It definitely feels amazing.

"The all-around matters to me. People keep saying I'm the first black American to win the gold medal and I'm so honoured."

Armed with cute nickname, a megawatt smile, a compelling back-story and two gold medals with maybe more to come in apparatus finals, it is certain fame and fortune await the teenager when she returns home to the United States.

The subject of a pre-Games article in Time magazine, Douglas shared the cover of Sports Illustrated's Olympic edition with her "Fierce Five" team mates but the first African-American to wear the all-round crown looks ready to emerge from the Games as a marketing dynamo.

From Olga Korbut in 1972 and Nadia Comaneci in 1976 to Nastia Liukin four years ago in Beijing, each Summer Games seems to introduce a new precocious talent, an irresistible charmer who commands the Olympic spotlight leaving spectators spellbound by their gravity-defying antics.

"I didn't realise that," said Douglas when asked about the endorsements and opportunities waiting for her. "I just wanted to seize the moment, you have to learn to seize the moment so it kind of hasn't sunk in yet."

Seizing the moment will also be on the minds of the men and women who will market Douglas as they try to capitalise on the fame that can be fleeting in the sport of women's gymnastics.

CHILDHOOD FASCINATION

Four years ago, Liukin, Shawn Johnson and Alicia Sacramone were the anchors of the U.S. team. When they all failed to earn a spot in the London squad, their moment in the limelight was gone.

While it may seem so, Douglas did not just appear out of thin air to take her place as America's Olympic sweetheart.

Her dream like most was born out of a childhood fascination then fashioned into reality by years of numbing training in gyms, some far away from her Virginia Beach home.

Just 14-years-old but determined to be the best gymnast she could be, Douglas convinced her mother to let her move to train with Chow, a coach she felt an instant connection with after watching his interaction with U.S. gymnasts at the Beijing Olympics on television.

"I thought it was possible (to make the Olympic team) but when you look back now, it's like Wow, anything is possible," When I moved to Iowa it was a lot of sacrifices but they all paid off.

"It was definitely a new kind of experience for me. I moved to Iowa my mom stayed with me in a hotel for a week and then she left and I moved in with a host family.

"It was definitely different."

When Chow met Douglas, he did not think she would survive in Iowa.

Dealing with bouts of homesickness and inconsistent performances it seemed as if Douglas might never earn her place among the gymnastic elite.

But in the space of exactly five months, Douglas has upset the gymnastics order at home and abroad. Allowed to compete unofficially at the American Cup in March, she outscored all the established women. In the U.S. trials last month, she pipped world all-around champion Jordyn Wieber to top spot for London.

"It is unusual, she really charged up and made a fantastic improvement, I don't recall anybody this quickly rising from an average good gymnast to a fantastic one," said U.S. women's team co-coordinator Marta Karolyi. "Every single competition she did better and better, we had to work with her consistency.

"I am so happy for Gabby, she is so much a nice girl, hardworking and dedicated. She proved that by moving away from home just to seek higher quality coaching.

"It takes a lot of suffering and hardship until you climb to the top. It depends on your character how you take those times and being put down makes you even hungrier.

"She just loves gymnastics and she really loves to be on the top."

(Editing by Pritha Sarkar)

'Flying Squirrel' Gabrielle Douglas captures all-around

U.S. gymnast Gabrielle Douglas dismounts from the vault during the Artistic Gymnastic women's individual all-around competition at the 2012 Summer Olympics, Thursday, Aug. 2, 2012, in London. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

LONDON — Just 14, Gabby Douglas pleaded with her mother to let her move cross country, certain a new coach could help her get to the Olympics.

Not two years after setting out on her own, Douglas beat Russia's Viktoria Komova for the all-around title Thursday night, becoming the third straight U.S. athlete to win gymnastics' biggest prize and the first African-American to do so. It was her second gold medal of the London Games, coming two nights after she and her "Fierce Five" teammates gave the United States its first Olympic title since 1996.

"It feels amazing to be the Olympic champion," Douglas said.

Puts her in a special category, too. Mary Lou Retton, Carly Patterson and Nastia Liukin are the only other Americans to win the Olympic all-around gold.

The Americans have been looking for their "next Mary Lou" since she won in 1984, and now they've got her in the 16-year-old Douglas. Throw in her adorable "Flying Squirrel" nickname and sweet backstory, and Douglas' two gold medals certainly won't be her only riches.

Douglas' performances can be marked by nervous errors

Douglas, a 16-year-old from Virginia Beach, Va., has the dazzling personality and outstanding skills to make other gymnasts disappear into the background.

But just when it seems time to pronounce her the best or most talented gymnast, there will be a thud. Oops, that was Douglas falling off the balance beam at the U.S. national championships, a mistake that cost her a point and the title that went to Jordyn Wieber.

When it mattered here at the 2012 Olympics, though, on qualification day, Douglas avoided any big kabooms. And so she will be among the favorites Thursday when the Olympic gymnastics women's all-around is contested.

Instead of another head-to-head battle against Wieber, who is the world champion, Douglas, 16, will compete next to the surprise American qualifier, Alexandra Raisman of Needham, Mass. Eighteen-year-old Raisman's historic strength has been her calm team leadership rather than ability to be a star.

Wieber, who had been the gold-medal favorite, finished fourth among all the gymnasts in qualifications but only third-best on her team, and the Olympic rule since 2000 is that only two gymnasts per country are allowed into the all-around final.

At the Beijing Olympics, two Americans, Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson, won the all-around gold and silver, and in 2004 American Carly Patterson was the all-around gold winner, so there is a streak that Douglas and Raisman will aim to defend.

"I don't want it to stop," said Douglas, who has been having the best 2012 of any gymnast in the world.

Gabrielle Douglas a favorite in all-around gymnastics event

When Gabrielle Douglas is doing her best gymnastics — when she is swinging so fast around the uneven bars that she makes the air buzz, or when she tiptoes across the balance beam and you notice her smile because she makes a somersault seem so routine — other gymnasts seem to fade away.

Historic win Douglas shatters glass ceiling

LONDON (AP) — Gabby Douglas believed two years ago, when she convinced her mother to let her move halfway across the country.

Martha Karolyi became a convert over the winter, when the bubbly teenager with the electric smile developed the tenacity required to be a champion.

Under the brightest lights, on the biggest stage, that belief shattered a glass ceiling.
Even if the first African-American to win an Olympic all-around title didn't quite realize it.
"I kind of forgot about that," Douglas said with a laugh.

Don't worry, Gabby, the world is going to have fun reminding you.
Douglas soared her way into history Thursday night, leading the whole way to climb a mountain paved by Ron Galimore, Dominique Dawes and a handful of others who showed the sport isn't just for the white or the privileged.

"How inspiring is that?" said Natalie Hawkins, the woman who allowed her then 14-year-old "baby" daughter to move from Virginia to Iowa in 2010 after Douglas convinced her that she was good enough to compete at the top.

Ages of Olympians revealed

Gabrielle Douglas of the United States competes on the balance beam in the Artistic Gymnastics Women's Individual All-Around final on Day 6 of the London 2012 Olympic Games at North Greenwich Arena on August 2, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images).