As of now, there still appears to be a slight edge in favor of Gabby Douglas, but MyKayla Skinner with another solid night could easily overtake Gabby’s spot on the team despite not being on the London team.
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Like all elite female gymnasts in the Olympic pipeline, Douglas trains under a personal coach at her “home” gym but attends monthly camps at a ranch owned by Martha and Bela Karolyi, where Martha assesses their progress and tests their competitive mettle through mini-competitions known as “verifications”.
Douglas is the returning all-around gold medal victor. He needs a top three finish in Eugene, Oregon, this weekend to get a chance to do that. Even after finishing first in the all-around on both nights of competition, Biles struggled to explain the emotions of finding out her Olympic fate. Several coaches turned Douglas down outright, some out of respect for Chow.
‘He was always my coach in the gym and you can only have one coach on the floor.
But no one was flawless on the first day. She wound up in third place with a 119.750 over the two-day, eight-rotation competition.
She began on the floor and fired up the capacity crowd with a saucy, high-flying routine that was worth the price of admission alone but not flawless stepping out of bounds on one of her tumbling runs.
Mary Lou Retton, the 1984 gold medalist, says “Simone is the most talented gymnast I’ve seen in my life”. Aly added, “I’m very proud of her – she’s handling it all like a pro”. There’s two loops that go around my foot.
Biles is the Michael Jordan of gymnastics, defying gravity and propelling her sport to another dimension. “Thankfully it didn’t. Maybe it was better I was thinking about that instead of actually thinking that I was at the Olympic trials”. Though an Olympic spot was still well within her reach – the trials all-around victor automatically qualified; the other four team members were chosen by national team coordinator Martha Karolyi and a USA Gymnastics committee, based on the results of the trials, previous competitions and training camp performances – Douglas, 20, acknowledged the pressure had gotten to her. “And I think that helped me”.
The Olympic gold medalist fell on the balance beam Friday while making a usually simple pass to plunge into a deep hole.
It has been 12 weeks since Maggie Nichols had surgery to fix the torn meniscus in her right knee.
Ragan shared with Teen Vogue that she feels pretty good about herself, but can still improve a bit for day two. It’s what happened last October, when she shook off lethargic training to finish a strong second to Biles at worlds.
“I wasn’t really surprised by anything”, Karolyi said about Friday’s performance. “I haven’t fallen one time so it was really disappointing, but I was so crooked that I couldn’t have saved it”.
“I thought it would be easy coming back, but it’s been up and down”, Douglas said Thursday, according to the USA Gymnastics website.
Time has been extra precious for Nichols since being cleared to resume training several months ago. Biles has been the all-around favorite for some time, but she took her vault one step higher and farther on Sunday, landing an enormous distance from the horse with control, security and a 9.900 for execution.
“I am a little disappointed – I was expecting to her to do an Amanar”, Karolyi said. “But I covered it nice and still got a nice score for it”. The 19-year-old has won gold in the all-around at the last three consecutive world championships, and in June she successfully defended her national title to win her fourth title in a row. She won the 400 meters last Sunday and is trying to qualify for the 2-4 double at the Olympics. Majority look like they’re 12 years old even if they are 18 or 19, so that can be either kind of creepy or kind of unbelievable.
“It feels so awesome, especially after championships”, Skinner said. “If hard work means medals, I don’t think any team can outwork ours”. “It only made me work that much harder”.
This will be Huddle’s second Olympic appearance – she finished 11th in the 5,000 at the London Games.
Gabby Douglas’ climb to the Rio Games teetered on a four-inch slab of wood Friday night during the U.S. Olympic gymnastics trials. “I just go in there, stay consistent and keep doing what I’ve been doing all week”.
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For Raisman, it is all systems go after scoring a total of 59.950 points on the vault, bars, balance beam and floor exercise.
