Gabby Douglas Comeback Thread (New goal: LA 2028)

[Doug1233]

I always loved her gymnastics. I found her to be a little wooden in interviews, repeating the same stock phrases and not the sharpest in interviews, but I never had any hate for her or her gymnastics. The whole thing with Skinner pasting herself over Gabby in the Rio was both hilarious (because it was so “Skinner”) but also really childish and uncalled for.

 

[MaryClare]

It’s not just the Skinner fans though. There was a lot of unfair criticism directed at Gabby in 2012

 

[rlayt]

She seems to be quiet and an introvert who just loves to work hard at a sport she loves. I suspect people don’t really understand that personality type in this social media, attention seeking, star seeking, influencer obsessed society that we live in. And what they don’t understand, they tear down.

I think a lot of her social media presence, publicity, the tv show, etc. in the lead up to 2016 didn’t give that impression to fans.

 

[tsarinajen]

Part of the Gabby hate also came from the Komova was robbed fan base, and to an extent Jordyn being “robbed” to a lesser extent.

By 2016, it was hard to root for her since she clearly didn’t want it by then either. I say as someone who will happily have Gabby as Olympic team champion over Locklear and Skinner.

I hope she’s happy this time no matter how far she goes with whatever she’s doing.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Komova, really? I’d have said the opposite way round. It seemed to start when Jordyn missed out on the AA qualifying and NBC behaved like her spot had been usurped. Probably more people who were showing their arses on twitter would’ve been exposed to that than pro Komova arguments.

 

[tsarinajen]

I remember reading, mostly Twitter and YouTube comments, about Gabby’s bar score being too high in comparison to the Russians.

And you’re right it’s mostly four year fans, but they’re usually the loudest when it comes to “injustices”.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

There’s definitely a Komova wuzrobbed contingent that exists. I’m just not sure that was a bigger group than US casual fans who tend to root for the home team and, as you say, make a disproportionate amount of noise.

 

[Passion]

I always loved her gymnastics. I found her to be a little wooden in interviews, repeating the same stock phrases and not the sharpest in interviews, but I never had any hate for her or her gymnastics. The whole thing with Skinner pasting herself over Gabby in the Rio was both hilarious (because it was so “Skinner”) but also really childish and uncalled for.

I agree her interviews are rough. But if you go back to before she won in 2012, she was actually great in interviews! Open, bubbly, and very likeable. I was going back looking for something a couple years ago listening to all her interviews and couldn’t believe it was the same girl. Someone had to have gotten into her head right after 2012 because it’s like night and day change.

This is from after 2012 Trials but before the Games in London started. She is so bright and excited here:



Skinner didn’t edit that team picture, someone on twitter did. She just retweeted it.

 

[Passion]

Another one right before London. She’s full of personality.

 

[Hatsumomo]

Between the shit Gabby received post-London and being victimized by Nassar, I’m not surprised she lost a lot of that bubbliness.

 

[Denn]

Frankly, Douglas was the best gymnast in the world in 2012, and we knew it going into the Olympics. So any criticism in 2012 was just ignorance, in my opinion.

(Yes, Komova had a chance to beat her on her best day, but Douglas was fitter and more reliable, too.)

With the right coaching and an open mind (that comes with maturity) to hear and enact the advice of wise people, she could be the best gymnast in the world, or perhaps second best behind Andrade, again in 2024. I really believe that the potential is there.

 

[rlayt]

A lot of stuff that was said post-London was silly stuff criticising Gabby for her hair and lack of fashion!? I remember her mother being criticised
for letting her have “bad hair”. Besides the fact that her kind of hair probably doesn’t respond well to pony tails, buns, etc, as we also saw with other women of color, it’s unfair for athletes to have those standards applied when they barely have time to live outside of training and schoolwork.

The things said during her comeback seemed more focused on her worthiness of repeating at the Olympics. Sadly her comeback appeared to be impacted by her publicity and the training she got from that dickhead Christian too. Or lack of the right kind of training. She improved a lot between Trials and Rio. She was close to an individual medal too.

It’s possible people are more aware of the racism in no some of all that she went through too. Wasn’t she also in trouble with certain groups for not putting her hand over her heart during an anthem?

 

[Sparklesmom]

Maybe it was the pervasive sexual abuse by the NT medical person? That would certainly do a number on my personality. Just sayin.

 

[Passion]

Maybe it was the pervasive sexual abuse by the NT medical person? That would certainly do a number on my personality. Just sayin.

Her interview style changed in the course of weeks from before London vs the media blitz after winning London.

My point was that she was not always bad at interviews.

 

[Doug1233]

Frankly, Douglas was the best gymnast in the world in 2012, and we knew it going into the Olympics.

I disagree. I think if they both hit their 4 best routines, Komova would have won.

And Komova had an easy 4 tenths of steps on the Amanar. She would have won gold with 1 step.

 

[RichardL]

I think Denn’s next sentence said that Douglas was more reliable, which made her the better gymnast IMO. Yes, I do believe that Komova would have won a best-4-of-all-time meet, but Komova never put that meet together. Douglas was always top 3 or 4 at every major AA meet: 2011 prelims, 2012 Olympics, 2015 Worlds, 2016 prelims. Insanely reliable as an AA competitor.

 

[Denn]

Yes, thank you. ray:t2:

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

She would. But I think the distinction is that going into London, Komova was much more of an unknown quantity because of her injury. We just didn’t know what level she was going to be at. Whereas before London started, Gabby was the best AAer in the world thus far in 2012 based on what we had seen. As it turned out, Komova’s best scores on each event were higher than Gabby’s, but there was less data to base that on before the Games.

Although as it happens, I never quite thought we’d seen the best of either of them over their careers. The level of sheer talent those two had between them was incredible, and I think we possibly didn’t fully acknowledge that because they happened to overlap with Simone. But it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see Gabby be able to get back to the highest level, and the same would be true for Komova if she’d been slightly less injured and the last ten months hadn’t happened.

 

[makam]

I always thought Komova peaked as a junior and it was a (slow) downward slide from there. The impression i got was that when skills that had been easy for her in her child body didn’t work in her adult body, she just…gave up. Now i only saw her in televised competitions so that could be coloring my opinion, but as a senior, she never seemed to have that fire to make gymnastics her bitch, ya know? Maybe if there had been more social media and we had seen her noodling around with other skills and having more fun with it, but at competitions it felt like if everything didn’t go perfectly right from the start, she’d rather go home.

 

[Doug1233]

Douglas was more reliable, which made her the better gymnast IMO.

I guess it depends on your definition of “better gymnast”. The way I read it, is scoring potential.

Komova 2012 was better than Gabby 2012.

Much like Laurie 2016 was better than Aly 2016.