Simone Biles and Gabrielle Douglas Officially Make the U.S. Women's Gymnastics Team

Simone Biles, 19, and Gabby Douglas, 20, have officially made the U.S. Women's Gymnastics team.

The young women along with their teammates will travel to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in August for the Olympics to defend the team's gold medal from the London Games in 2012.

Douglas is the reigning all-around champion. Her appearance on the team is pretty remarkable. After London, she took two years off in 2013 and 2014, and returned to win a silver medal at the world championships in 2015.

She's the first reigning Olympic all-around champion to compete at the next Games since Nadia Comaneci in 1980.



But Douglas' performances lately haven't been stellar. She placed fifth at the P&G Championships in June and seventh overall at the Olympic Team Trials in San Jose, CA. She hopes a recent coaching change will help with consistency.

If Douglas can recover to deliver strong performances on her specialty event, uneven bars, the choice will be well worth it for the team.

Biles is the favorite to capture the all-around gold in Rio. Because she placed at the top of the leaderboard at the Trials, she was awarded an automatic spot on the team.

The Texas-native is unstoppable. She has won every competition she's entered since 2013, making her one of the world's most dominant athletes. She has 14 world championship medals (including 10 golds) in just three years.

The team is chosen by a three-person panel including National Team Coordinator, Martha Karolyi. The team members are not necessarily the five women with the highest all-around scores. Each athlete is chosen for what she will contribute to the team's scores. That means Karolyi must consider which five-woman combination will garner top scores on the four events.

The other team members are Laurie Hernandez, Madison Kocian and Aly Raisman.






Photo by Jason Lavengood