Seven gymnasts from Saltire attended the European Teamgym Championships in Maribor, Slovenia between 10th-16th October.
Six GB teams consisting of gymnasts from across Great Britain recently travelled to Slovenia to compete in the 11th European Teamgym Championships. Having recently developed national teams involving gymnasts from a variety of clubs for the first time, with GB having previously sent club teams to represent the country, a large amount of expectation was placed on the gymnasts to make their mark on the big stage.
Over five days of training, qualification and finals, GB teams competed in all sections of the competition for the first time, with all three junior teams qualifying for their respective finals; Junior mixed – 6th place, Junior women – 6th place and Junior men – 3rd place and two of the three senior teams qualifying – Senior mixed – 4th and Senior women – 6th. The Senior men narrowly missed out on qualification in the highly competitive senior men category however still managed to achieve the highest score ever achieved by a GB team on trampette of 17.100.
The records continued to be beaten during finals where the Senior mixed team scored a record score on tumble of 18.850 achieving the highest tumble score for any Senior mixed team for the last four years. The Junior women also smashed the previous GB floor score record with a huge score of 19.333.
Overall, the Senior mixed team placed 4th, Senior women consisting of Saltire gymnasts Kendal Smith, Lara Craig and Katie Vince came 6th and Senior men including Sandy Wallace placed overall 7th. The Junior women finished 5th breaking the previous top position of 6th place and the Junior mixed team came 6th including Dylan Campbell. The stars of GB team were the Junior men, who although consisting of some of the youngest members of the delegation managed to make history by finishing in 3rd place and bring home the first medal ever won by GB at the Championships in the 22 years of the event. The team consisted of four Scottish gymnasts including Saltire gymnasts Adam Souter and Fraser McLeod both from Musselburgh. The final scores for the team in the final were, Floor – 16.683, Tumble – 16.500 and Trampette – 15.750 with a final score of 48.933.
Following on from the Championships, the future of Teamgym in Great Britain looks bright with many looking forwards to next Championships in two years time and hopeful for how well GB can do the next time they are on the European stage.
