Gymnast Gabby Douglas Weighs In On MyKayla Skinner’s Team USA Comments
After MyKayla Skinner commented on Team USA’s work ethic, Gabby Douglas told E! News her training strategy and detailed her Ancestry collab.
a certain way of doing things, listen to your body,” she noted. “If you don’t need hours of pounding or you don’t need a tougher coach, and it works for you, then I say why not structure around how your mind is, how your body is?”
“I really believe that you can’t put everyone in the same category,” Gabby continued. “That’s just my take on it, everyone’s different.”
For the three-time Olympic gold medalist, she prefers to train with a “very tough” coach.
“Not a mean coach,” the 28-year-old explained. “I think people get that very confused. Not a mean coach but a tough coach that really will push the best out of you.”
“I typically get very lazy,” she shared. “I need that coach to be like, ‘Hey, nope let’s wake up, let’s do it,’ because I get very distracted easily.”
Indeed, Gabby discovered this about herself after taking Ancestry’s Performance Traits test.
“Can’t focus, unlikely to balance, not a high jumper,” she added of her traits. Plus, she’s “very driven by seeing success, very motivated, very self-disciplined, a sprinter” and has a “high pain tolerance.”
One feature of DNA test also showed Gabby that she has a lot of traits in common with Olympic track and field star Jackie Joyner-Kersee.
Ahead of 2024 Paris Games, keep reading to see where more Olympic gymnasts are today…
A pioneer in the sport, she was among the first female athletes to help popularize gymnastics in the nation, thanks to her strong performance at the 1968 Mexico City Games, although she never medaled. Rigby retired after the 1972 Olympics and is perhaps best known for playing the title role in the theatrical musical Peter Pan, which earned her a Tony Award nomination in 1991.
She has been a familiar face to not only theatre fans but also TV viewers, due to serving for many years as an ABC Sports commentator, in addition to appearing on the series The Six Million Dollar Man. Rigby has also been open throughout the years about her previous battle with disordered eating.
The star and husband Tom McCoy share two children, and she has two children from a previous marriage.
A defining cultural figure of the 1980s before retiring in 1986, she won five medals at the 1984 Los Angeles Games. Among those prizes was gold in the all-around, making her the first American woman to achieve this feat in the sport. She shares four children with her ex-husband, former University of Houston quarterback Shannon Kelley, who she split from in 2018.
Outside of athletics, she became vocal in politics, supporting President Ronald Reagan along his 1984 reelection campaign trail and later speaking at the 2004 Republican National Convention. Retton made cameos in the films Scrooged and Naked Gun 33+1⁄3, and more recently, she became the first woman inducted into the Houston Sports Hall of Fame in 2020.
The retired athlete was hospitalized for severe pneumonia in 2023.
Shannon Miller
With a total of seven medals, won during the 1992 Barcelona Games and 1996 Atlanta Games, she became the most-awarded female Olympic gymnast in history. After failing to qualify for the 2020 Sydney Games, Miller turned her focus to her schooling, earning a business degree and later a law degree, although she never took the Bar Exam.
Miller went on to appear in fitness videos, published the 2015 autobiography It’s Not About Perfect and is an advocate for preventing childhood obesity. She and second husband John Falconetti share two children.
