Gabby Douglas plans to return to competition in a bid to make the 2024 Olympic team, seven years after her most recent meet.
Photos and a video of the 2012 Olympic all-around champion performing on a balance beam and uneven bars were posted on her Instagram account on Thursday, her first posts on the platform in 11 months and her first public comment on returning.
“I wanted to find the joy again for the sport that i absolutely love doing,” a caption read. “I know i have a huge task ahead of me and i am beyond grateful and excited to get back out on the floor and even more grateful for all of your support and love. it truly means so much. there’s so much to be said but for now….let’s do this #2024.”
Later, Douglas’ mom confirmed that the aim is a 2024 Olympic bid. As of Thursday, Douglas wasn’t planning to compete at the next significant meet, the U.S. Classic on Aug. 5, but still has time to enter should she change her mind.
If Douglas does not compete at the Classic, she cannot enter the U.S. Championships later in August, the last major domestic meet this year. That means that her first meet back could be in 2024.
In February, coach Valeri Liukin said Douglas had returned to training at his family’s World Olympic Gymnastics Academy (WOGA) in Texas.
Douglas, 27, last competed at the 2016 Olympics, winning a second consecutive team gold medal. For the next six years, there were no reports of her training, but she never announced a retirement.
Now, Douglas will bid to become the oldest U.S. Olympic female gymnast since 1952, according to Olympedia.org.
Suni Lee and Simone Biles, the last two Olympic all-around gold medalists, plan to return to elite competition at Classic, which could make for an unprecedented field of champions at meets in 2024.
An extended break in gymnastics is not unprecedented.
In 2021, 2008 Olympian Chellsie Memmel ended a nine-year retirement. She competed at nationals as a 32-year-old mother of two and did not make Olympic Trials.
Douglas, a Virginia Beach native, started gymnastics at age 6 in 2002 and left her family in 2010 to train in West Des Moines, Iowa, under Liang Chow, who coached Shawn Johnson to four medals at the Beijing Games.
The move paid off. After finishing fourth in the junior all-around at the 2010 U.S. Championships, Douglas moved up to senior in 2011 and was the youngest member of that year’s world championships team that took gold.
Douglas soared even higher in 2012. That March, she posted the highest all-around score at the American Cup, ahead of world champion Jordyn Wieber.
Douglas then took second to Wieber at the U.S. Championships and won the Olympic Trials, setting her up as an all-around gold-medal contender in London.
In the Olympic all-around final, Douglas won by the second-closest margin of victory (.259 of a point over Russian Viktoria Komova) under the scoring system implemented after the 2004 Athens Games.
She became the first Black gymnast to capture an Olympic all-around title and the third consecutive American after Carly Patterson and Nastia Liukin (Valeri’s daughter). Biles and Lee extended the streak at the last two Games.
After London, Douglas took two full years off from competition, bouncing from Iowa to Los Angeles to Iowa to Ohio at different training gyms. She returned in 2015, along with Aly Raisman, determined to become the first gymnasts to make back-to-back U.S. Olympic women’s teams since 2000.
Douglas was shaky at first but peaked at the October 2015 World Championships, taking the all-around silver medal behind Biles.
Douglas then won the March 2016 American Cup, her first all-around title since the London Games.
Douglas had struggles at the meets that decided the five-woman Rio Olympic team, placing fourth in the all-around at the U.S. Championships and seventh at the Olympic Trials.
Still, Douglas was chosen for the squad, based partly on her experience, her strong 2015 season and her skill on uneven bars.
Douglas tried to defend her all-around title in Rio but was outscored by Biles and Raisman in qualifying. A nation can advance no more than two gymnasts per individual Olympic final, so Douglas’ defense ended there, even though her qualifying score would have earned silver in the all-around final.
She helped the U.S. to repeat gold in the team event and, in her most recent competitive routine, placed seventh in the bars final in Rio.
NBC Sports’ Sarah Hughes contributed to this report.