Next month, Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas, Laurie Hernandez, Madison Kocian, and Aly Raisman will head to the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
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After a final round of trials, Gabby Douglas, Simone Biles and three more ladies were named as the U.S. Olympic Women’s Gymnastics team on July 10.
First-year senior Laurie Hernandez was chosen to the team, thanks to a second-place finish at trials and third-place finish at US championships last month.
She earned an automatic spot on the team by posting the top all-around score, 123.250 points, over the two nights of Trials competition.
Looking back on the past two years since she returned to gymnastics competition, Gabby Douglas paused 24 seconds to consider a question about the low point in her comeback.
But doing something unprecedented would be an appropriate send-off for Martha Karolyi, who is retiring as national team coordinator after Rio. She’s faced criticism for her race, like when Italian gymnast Carlotta Ferlito suggested in 2013 that “we should also paint our skin black so we can win too”, but she hasn’t let it get to her. “I guess I just have really tough skin”, Biles told People magazine in response to the comment.
The Rio Olympics don’t begin until August 5, but the U.S. Women’s Gymnastics Team was announced on Sunday night following the second day of the Olympic Trials.
Simone Biles, 19, remains the favorite to win the all-around title despite a fall off the balance beam at the U.S. trials. Biles excels at vault, floor and balance beam, as does Raisman, while Douglas and Kocian are specialists on the uneven bars, and Hernandez shines on floor.
The Human Emoji, as she’s been nicknamed, was only 12 when she watched the last Olympics from her home in Old Bridge, New Jersey. In 2015, she won all-around silver at the world championships. Still, her versatility in all four events and her shining performances on uneven bars – something USA is weak in – pushed her to the front. Now, she gushed, “It’s insane to look back and see that I was fan-girling over like these awesome superstars back then, and now we can all be together on a team”. But U.S. coaches chose him for the relay team, meaning he could run in the Olympic preliminaries or the final. Douglas’ life has been filled with distractions since winning Olympic gold in London, the latest being this weekend when she unexpectedly changed which one of her coaches is with her on the floor at competitions. “I’m going to prove to her that I am not going to falter”. It will likely be her only appearance in the team final. The Jamaican Olympic Committee released its delegation, and Bolt is among the selections even though an injury kept him from formally qualifying at his country’s national championships. “And she could have fallen 10 times tonight and she still would’ve made the team”, said Raisman.
“If I say something, I don’t get to do bars”, she said. “We all trust her. If this is the way that she wants to do it, I think that it works”.
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Kocian is on this team for one primary reason – uneven bars.
