Gabby Douglas made History as the first Black gymnast to win an Olympic all-around gymnastics title — but she currently has no clue where her three gold medals are located.
“They are not displayed. I don’t know where they are,” Douglas, 28, exclusively admitted to Us Weekly on Wednesday, July 17, while chatting about her partnership with Ancestry. “I think my mom has them.”
While the athlete is uncertain that her medals are currently in her mother Natalie Hawkins’ possession, she does believe “they’re somewhere safe.”
Douglas made her Olympics debut at the 2012 Summer Games in London, scoring an individual and team gold in the all-around and team comPetitions. She returned for the 2016 Rio Games, where the U.S. women’s gymnastics team once again won gold in the group comPetition. Though Douglas did not place in the all-around comPetition, her teaMMAtes Simone Biles and Aly Raisman walked away with gold and silver medals, respectively.
Douglas told Us that despite her historic wins, she doesn’t bring out her medals very often. “They’re so fragile. They fray,” she explained. “You have a lot of oils on your hands, and it rubs off. So, I just like to keep them in the box.”
After skipping the 2020 Tokyo Games, Douglas returned to gymnastics earlier this year in hopes of making the 2024 Olympics team. However, she withdrew her bid ahead of the Olympic trials after suffering an ankle injury in May during the U.S. gymnastics championships in Texas.
“It’s feeling better,” Douglas told Us of her recovery. “[It’s] still not a hundred percent, but it’ll get there. I am back in the gym, just keeping in shape, doing a little bit here and there, not to be completely out of shape.”
Douglas went on to note that the hardest part of the Olympics journey is “making the team,” explaining, “Once you’re on the team, it’s solidified. So, you’re like, ‘OK, I can just go out there and represent USA. But before that, it’s a lot of work. It’s stressful. You have to do the lineups and you have to go through processing. But once you get over all that, it becomes very fun once you start comPeting.”
Gymnastics is something Douglas recently discovered runs in her blood through her partnership with Ancestry. She teamed up with the genealogy company to see if her elite athleticism is a result of “training or DNA.” According to Douglas, “It’s a little bit of both.”
She revealed: “Four generations from my mom’s side — great, great, great, like, grandfather — he was a porter for a gymnastics club. And it was like a hundred years later, I won the Olympics and it was just crazy. And so, being able to see, like, natural flexibility, strength and all the traits that I have, it makes sense to why these things come natural. So, like I said, it was very cool to see.”
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Users can see how their genetic traits compare to other Olympians such as Nastia Liukin, Kerri Walsh-Jennings, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Brad Snyder on Ancestry.com/BringYourDNAGame.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
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