HARTFORD — Gabby Douglas’ Olympic gold medal is so 2012.
Sure, she’s the reigning all-around champion, a title she’ll have for at least two more months. Bring that up, however, and odds are she’ll give you a blank look — not unlike the one she wore when someone asked her where the gold medal was the morning after she won the all-around in London.
“I keep getting reminded, ‘You’re the Olympic champion.’ Oh yeah, I kind of forgot,” Douglas said Friday after training for the Secret Classic, the qualifier for the U.S. Gymnastics Championships later this month.
Now, the idea of that may be unfathomable to the average person, even the weekend warrior. Win one of those rare and highly coveted prizes, and most folks would be wearing it to the grocery store, around the house, even to bed.
But that’s why Douglas is in position to do something no women’s Olympic champion has done since Nadia Comaneci and the rest of us are, well, us.
“For me, I just look at myself as another girl vying for a spot in 2016,” Douglas said. “Nothing’s going to be handed to me. I have to work really hard to get it.”
Sentimentality is not a word in Martha Karolyi’s vocabulary, be it Romanian or English. Sure, she’s fond of the women who have brought the U.S. riches beyond compare over the last 15 years. Have you seen the selfies she’s taken with the recent world teams?
But as the women’s national team coordinator, the only gold medals she cares about are the next ones.
“I was always trained to not look at the results, not look at anybody. Just focus on yourself and the results will show up by themselves,” Douglas said. “I’m my biggest critic, and I’m focusing on myself and what I need to do because gymnastics is already a tough sport.”
Vera Caslavska of Czechoslovakia is the last woman to repeat as the Olympic all-around champion, and that was back in 1968. In fact, no all-around gold medalist has even competed at the next Olympics since Comaneci in 1980, where she won the silver medal.
Chasing more history appealed to Douglas, the first African-American to win the all-around. But so, too, did having a different experience in the lead-up to the Games.
Douglas had, for gymnastics, a meteoric rise before London. The Olympics were only her fourth international competition. Though she was part of the 2011 world championships team, she was still so under-the-radar that her appearance at the 2012 American Cup was as an alternate, meaning her victory didn’t “count.”
Coming back gave her the chance to compete more, to be the headliner that she rarely was before London.
She competed at the world championships last fall, helping the Americans win a third consecutive world title and finishing second to Simone Biles in the all-around. She won this year’s American Cup — officially, this time.
And with heavy air time thanks to commercials and a reality TV show, Douglas Family Gold, she ranks right up there with Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky and Allyson Felix as the most visible of the American hopefuls for Rio.
“She handles it really well — I think she handles it better than I do,” said Kittia Carpenter, Douglas’ coach. “She just has that great personality that can handle it and then focus in when she has to focus in. She doesn’t let outside things bother her. Negative, positive, she doesn’t let it bother her. She just stays focused.”
It’s the journey and the process that matter. The medals that come as a result, that’s just the bonus.
