By Scott Bregman
Action photo by John Cheng
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"I'm really strong," Gabrielle Douglas told USA Gymnastics during a visit to the U.S. Olympic Training Center at the Karoyli Ranch in Houston.

It was the 15-year-old's unlikely response to a tough question: is it hard to live thousands of miles away from your mom, and siblings? Her father is even further away, stationed in Afghanistan as part of the Air National Guard, 203rd Red Horse Squadron.

In October of 2010, Douglas moved from her longtime home in Virginia to West Des Moines, Iowa. Douglas has not been back home since the move – that's something she says will have to wait until after the 2012 Olympic Games in London. She had decided her gymnastics needed a change and that change would be Chow's Gymnastics and Dance Institute and coach Liang Chow, whose pupil, Shawn Johnson, won the 2008 Olympic balance beam gold medal and three silver medals.

But it wasn't an easy decision. There was Douglas' first gym to consider. After all, Excalibur Gymnastics in Virginia Beach, Va., had brought Douglas up the elite ranks with impressive results, including a fourth-place finish in the junior women's all-around at the 2010 Visa Championships. And Douglas' mom, Natalie Hawkins told the Des Moines Register in July that she had been against the move at first. But Hawkin's other children, who pushed Douglas into the sport years ago, knew their sister had to take the chance.

It's a decision that has paid off for Douglas, who has skyrocketed through the rankings in her first year as a senior competitor. Her hard work culminated last week with a berth to Team USA for the 2011 World Championships.

Working next to Johnson, the 2007 World Championships all-around gold medalist, who is the midst of a comeback in an attempt to make the 2012 Olympic team, has given Douglas a model to follow.

"Shawn's so inspirational," Douglas said, "and she's coming back from all her injuries and dealing with so much. I love training with her."

In Iowa, Douglas seems to have found the right fit in coach Chow, who has inspired a new outlook on the sport for Douglas. "They have so much confidence in me here. I love it because I'm training bigger skills," Douglas said with her beaming smile.

"Bigger skills" is putting it modestly.

At the 2010 Visa Championships in Hartford, Conn., Douglas competed in the junior division and earned just a 5.3 difficulty score for her uneven bars routine.

Twelve short months later at the 2011 Visa Championships in Saint Paul, Minn., Douglas, now a senior, showed a much improved swing, a Tkatchev to Pak salto combination full of amplitude and was the only senior competitor to perform a skill on the event in L-grip. Her difficulty score, a 6.4, was the third highest and helped her to a share of the bronze medal on the event.

Despite her success on the uneven bars, Douglas made mistakes on the other apparatus – something she was determined to correct heading into the final selection camps for the World Championships team.

"I was doing a lot of numbers in training in the gym, trying to boost up my self-confidence and my consistency," said Douglas. "I went into camp focused, knowing I'm going to hit my routines at the right moment when it counts."

And hit she did. Her performance at the camps at the Karoyli Ranch earned her a trip to Tokyo, Japan, for her first-ever World Championships.

"I feel so honored to represent the country, represent USA," Douglas said after being named to the team. And she'll get that chance in just a few short days.