This Year’s U.S. Women’s Olympic Gymnastics Team Is Giving Us All the Unity Feels

The 2016 U.S. women’s gymnastics Olympic team. (Photo: @Instagram)

The Olympics in Rio are fast approaching, and the members of the U.S. gymnastics team are among the top athletes to watch this year. Considered by some to be one of the best gymnastics teams to go to the Olympics, the team — made up of Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas, Aly Raisman, Laurie Hernandez, and Madison Kocian — is shaping up to be a formidable force and is, as ESPN calls it, the “prohibitive favorite” in its event at this year’s Games.

The buzz around the team, led by coordinator Martha Karolyi, continues to build as we get closer to the Olympics; both Gabby Douglas and Simone Biles nabbed Teen Vogue covers, and Douglas’s likeness has been made into one of Barbie’s Shero dolls. Besides the fact that these young women are immensely talented, this year’s team also has people excited because its members represent a diverse sampling of what Americans look like. Three of the five gymnasts are women of color, and one is Jewish-American. At a time when racial tensions are high, seeing these young women work together to bring home some medals for the U.S. is exactly the example of unity we could all use right now.

It’s a great way to remind people that the U.S. is still the diverse cultural melting pot we like to see ourselves as being, and in the midst of a great deal of strife, we can still come together as Americans, regardless of our backgrounds — and root for some talented girls to take home the gold.

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