Gabby Douglas, who took home the gold for her individual performance and for her work as part of the American team, tells the talk show host that things got so bad, she threatened to quit.


Gabby Douglas and Oprah Winfrey spoke about the hard road that Douglas faced on her way to Olympic gold.

Gabby Douglas overcame several challenges to win two Olympic gold medals — none more daunting than cold shoulders and slurs from some racist fellow gymnasts.

On her way to London and triumph as the first African-American gymnast to win individual all-around Olympic gold, Gabby, 16, nearly gave up her dream because she was tormented at a gym where she trained in Virginia Beach, Va.

“I was just, you know, kind of getting racist jokes, kind of being isolated from the group. So it was definitely hard. I would come home at night and just cry my eyes out,” she told Oprah Winfrey in a segment on “Oprah’s Next Chapter.”
She recalled a specific example of racism. “One of my teammates was like, ‘Could you scrape the bar?’” she remembered. “And they were like, ‘Why doesn’t Gabby do it, she’s our slave?’”
“I was the only African-American at that gym,” Gabby went on. “I definitely felt isolated. Why am I deserving this? Is it because I’m black? — those thoughts were going through my mind.”
Gabby appeared on Oprah’s show Sunday with her mother, Natalie Hawkins, who recalled how her daughter told her about the crue.