Saturday, December 1, 2012

Gabby Douglas: I almost quit gymnastics to work at Chick-fil-A

Things got so bad for Olympic gold medalist Gabby Douglas that, for a while, the best gymnast in the world had flirted with leaving the sport to sling chicken sandwiches at a Chick-fil-A right before she was on the brink of stardom.

Douglas, a member off the Fierce Five darlings of the London Games, confessed to friends that she was homesick and tired of the grueling training routine and longed to head home and be anything but a gymnast.

"Gymnastics is not my passion anymore," the then 15-year-old texted her mother — only seven months before claiming Olympic gold in the individual all-around gymnastics in London last summer.

"I can get a job at Chick-fil-A in Virginia Beach and live off the 14-grand I just won at World Championships," she writes in her new autobiography, "Grace, Gold & Glory: My Leap of Faith.  The book will be published Dec. 4.

"I just want to be a normal teenage kid," she wrote.



Dubbed The Flying Squirrel, Douglas became the first black woman to win the all-around gold in the sport.

The young athlete's mom, Natalie Hawkins, who supported the family while Gabby's father served in the Air National Guard, let her daughter move to Iowa and train.  She was heartbroken that Gabby wanted to drop out of the sport. It was only after the gymnast's big brother John convinced her to stick it out that she returned to the gym.



Little sis went on to win two medals in London, after beating two Russians and teammate Aly Raisman, including the top medal in her sport.

Douglas has already admitted an affinity for fast food and, shortly after The Games, told Jay Leno on "The Tonight Show" that she celebrated her Olympic medals with a couple of Egg McMuffins.

The only problem was that first lady Michelle Obama was sitting next to her and gave the carb-deprived pixie a little lecture about the dangers of a bad diet.

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