Gabby Douglas, Madison Kocian Headline 2016 U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Team

The 2016 U.S. Women’s Gymnastics Olympic Trials were held at SAP Center in San Jose, California on Sunday, and five talented athletes secured their spots on one of the most difficult Olympic teams to qualify for.

Gabby Douglas, Madison Kocian Headline 2016 U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Team

Gabby Douglas, Madison Kocian, Aly Raisman, Simone Biles, and Laurie Hernandez all qualified on Sunday.

The winner of the trials (Biles) automatically earns a spot. The other four members are selected by the committee, which considers their performance at trials, their international competition experience, their consistency at meets and their ability to deliver strong performances.

The team won the gold medal in London in 2012, and will seek to win it again in Rio this year.

Douglas, the defending Olympic champion, is the first African-American woman to win all-around gold at the games. The 20-year-old Virginia Beach native took a few years off after London and began competing again in 2015. She won silver in the all-around at the World Gymnastics Championships last year, and placed fourth all-around at nationals this year.

Douglas had a rough competition on the first night of the Olympic trials on Friday. She appeared shaky on the floor, took big steps on her landings on vault and bars, and then fell off the beam while doing a turn, thus losing a point. She finished seventh that night.

The second night also proved difficult for Douglas. She once again fell off the beam and had more shaky landings on the floor, and finished in seventh place again.

Raisman, 22, is the oldest of the group, and is likely to become team captain. Like Douglas, she has been working on a comeback in the last two years. She won gold with the team in London in 2012, and gold in the floor exercise as well. She also won the bronze medal in the balance beam competition that year, and came in second all-around at nationals this year.

Hernandez is expected to be the Cinderella of this year’s Olympic gymnastics competition. The 16-year-old finished the first night of competition in second place. She made a mistake on the bars, but managed to recover. Aside from a slight wobble on the beam, her performance in that exercise was fantastic as well. The second night, she maintained her second-place spot.

Kocian, 19, is the current world bars champion, which makes her a welcome addition to a team that’s weakest on bars. On the first night of trials, she turned in a solid performance on the two events where the team would need her most: bars and beam.

Kocian fell off the beam on the second night of competition and fell back to 9th place, but her bars performance was incredible.

Finally, we have Simone Biles. The 19-year-old has been the world champion for three consecutive years (the only woman ever to do so), and the national champion four years in a row (the first American woman in 42 years to do so).

She is the favorite to win the all-around competition in Rio, which would make four Olympic Games in a row where an American woman has won that title.

Biles had an uncharacteristically rocky first night at Olympic trials. She flubbed a move in her bar routine. Then, she fell off the beam in the infamous wolf turn.

Biles attributed her wobbles and mistakes to an excess of adrenaline ― the atmosphere in the arena, she said, “was just insane.”

Nevertheless, she won the first night of competition, finishing a full point ahead of Hernandez, who placed second.

The Rio 2016 team will be joined by three alternates: Ashton Locklear, whose strengths are bars and beam; MyKayla Skinner, who’s a powerful vaulter and tumbler; and Ragan Smith, who’s also very strong on bars and beam

SAN JOSE, CA – JULY 10: Madison Kocian competes in the floor exercise during Day 2 of the 2016 U.S. Women’s Gymnastics Olympic Trials at SAP Center on July 10, 2016 in San Jose, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

Article by Pablo Mena