Gabby Douglas Wins Gold Medal for Olympic All-Around Gymnastics!
Gabby Douglas, 16, won the all-around women's gymnastics title today. Adding to her gold medal she won with the U.S. Fab Five Team two days, ago, Douglas became the first African-American to win the all-around title with a total score of 62.232. She led the scoreboard since the first event on Thursday all the way to victory today. Coming in second was Russia's Viktoria Komova.
Douglas, nicknamed "The Flying Squirrel," started training at the age of six. She was a gold medalist at the 2011 World Championships with her team in Tokyo and came in first for the uneven beam at the 2012 Visa Championships and the Secret U.S. Classic, according to the official website of the USA Gymnastics.
Her soaring ability on the uneven bars, which many may argue is her biggest strength, gave her the nickname of "Flying Squirrel," one that the athlete is proud of.
"I like to become the Flying Squirrel," Douglas said, according to USA Today. "I like squirrels. They're so adventurous.
Douglas had pretty good training to get her this far and help her move forward. She moved to Iowa to train with Liang Chow, coach of 2008 Olympian Shawn Johnson. She even trained alongside the Olympic silver medal-winner until Johnson's retirement in June 2012.
Training with a past Olympic winner could only have helped Douglas prepare for this monumental step in her career of competing in the 2012 Olympics and along with her women's USA gymnastics team. Douglas' team won the first Olympic gold medal for USA since the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia - where the U.S. women's gymnastics team won its first- ever team gold.
