The hounding of Gabby Douglas: an unworthy end for a great American champion

Gabby Douglas stood beneath the Rio Olympic Arena, still in her Team USA leotard, trying hard to understand how she had become the most unpatriotic athlete in Rio. Tears welled in her eyes. She tried hard to talk but no words came out. Her pauses were long and uncomfortable.

“I’ve been trying to stay off the internet because there’s so much negativity,” she said.


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The attacks against her have been everywhere these last few days. If it wasn’t the bullies berating her for not putting her hand over her heart while the US national anthem played, it was people attacking her for not jumping up and cheering hard enough for team-mates at the all-around final. There were even renewals of old criticisms that her hair wasn’t straight enough.

All of this prompted her mother, Natalie Hawkins, to tell Reuters this weekend, that Douglas is “heartbroken”.

It showed on Sunday, in Douglas’s final performance of this Olympics and maybe in the Games ever. Douglas finished sixth in the uneven bars, far from the medal stand she owned four years ago in London, and shook her head, confused and perplexed. What had she done wrong? Nothing made sense.

“I mean, you do [Olympics] for your country, and you do it for yourself, and you do it for other people … and I step back and I’m like: wait, what did I do to disrespect the people? How have I offended them? What have I done? When I stand back I’m like: what? I was standing in respect for USA. I’m coming out there representing them to the best of my abilities, so how would I be in disrespect?

“I don’t get that part. Sorry.”

Douglas has been besieged in recent days, mostly for the fact she didn’t put her hand on her heart during the anthem. It probably wouldn’t have been an issue had the rest of the US gymnasts on the medal stand alongside her done the same. The protocol is a murky one for athletes. Many don’t do so during medal ceremonies. Hawkins said in the Reuters interview that they are a military family and that people in the military either salute the flag or stand to attention.


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Douglas was standing to attention. But apparently that wasn’t good enough for the experts back home, who piled their hatred upon her. If only they could have seen what they had done, reducing a 20-year old woman to tears for something that many athletes – from the US and around the world – don’t do anyway. The more Douglas talked the more bewildered she looked, as if all the magic from London in 2012 could disappear so fast in four years.

“I sit back and I don’t know why. I’m just like, what?” Douglas said. “When they talk about my hair, or me not putting my hand on my heart, or me being very salty in the stands and really criticizing me … it really doesn’t feel good. For me it was a little bit hurtful.”

Her voice started to crack. She paused.





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