Squad Mini Notices

~ Entry Fees for TUM BC now due (£47)

~ Fees increase as of Mar £40/£70.

~ Sun 12th Jun - No NDP Acro training

~ 7th/8th Aug - No training

~ Acro Summer Hol training as from Mon Aug 1st for 4 weeks

       Mon. Tues, Wed, Fri 10 - 1.00

       Mon, Wed, Fri 5.30 - 8.30

       Invitational Choreo sessions t.b.a

Gymnastic joy for Andover

Andover Gymnastics Club had fantastic results at the recent Tumble World Championships. Senior andover gymnast and reigning British Champion, Kristof Willerton (18), now an undergraduate at Oxford University, led the British team during the event held at the NIA,  Birmingham. The team consisted of  Kristof Willerton (18) (Andover), Jordon Lucas (17) (Basingstoke), Dan Lannagan (20) (was Basingstoke now Wakefield) and Shaun Gregory (18) (was Pinewood now Wakefield). The first round of competition was to qualify  through to both the team finals and to the individual top 8 finals. With the 3 youngest gymnasts of the world championships the GB team is a young and up and coming team, despite this they held their nerve, all landing the two required tumbles in this qualification round. Performances of note included Jordon’s first run - containing 3 double somersaults and Kristof’s second run containing a double twisting  and a triple twisting double straight somersault (miller), scoring a well deserved 37.3. The team qualified in an unexpectedly good 3rd position, with China 1st, Russia 2nd, Denmark 4th, Canada 5th, with France and Ukraine failing to make the finals. Kristof was the top placed GB gymnast, qualifying for the individual finals in a surprising 6th place well ahead of all expectations

The next day the 5 teams came back to the NIA for the Team finals. In the Team Finals each team nominates 3 gymnasts, each gymnast performs 1 run only and all the scores count, so any mistake affects the team results. Jordon went first, and landed his run safely scoring a solid 35 points, and then disaster struck with the British No 2 falling on his last skill. To be fair to Shaun, he had spent several days the previous week in hospital with a throat infection, but the judges can only mark what they see, no sympathy allowed.  It would have been easy for Kristof to lose focus at this point but he gathered his thoughts and delivered a clean run to limit the damage to the GB team and further enhance his reputation as one of the world’s top gymnasts. Sadly the team ended the day in 4th place which we would have been happy with coming into the competition, but having seen how close to the top teams left the team feeling disappointed. To make matters worse one of the GB woman’s team broke 2 bones in her foot in the woman’s team finals where they were strong contenders.

For the third day in a row Coach Paddy Lavelle and Kristof returned to the competition venue, this time for the Individual Finals, with the top competitors from all over the world, including 3 ex world and European champions. The target we set ourselves was to try to hold on to his 6th place gained in the qualifying competition. The strategy we chose to adopt was to put out the most difficult run first and try to post a big score, forcing the other competitors to work all out and hopefully make a mistake.

Watched by a packed venue and supportive audience Kristof opened the competition with his signature tumble (full full to miller), and produced an almost perfect pass scoring 37.3, equalling his personal best from the qualifying round. A second run of whip into full full through to triple somersault lifted Kristof’s score to a new PB of 73.3 , up 1.1 from his qualifying score, and placing him in a fantastic 4th place in the world.

His top 8 place has earned the GB team a place in the World Games, (2013 Columbia), which is regarded as the Olympic Games for non Olympic Disciplines, Gymnastics has 10 disciplines with only 4 represented in the Olympics.

His excellent results were shown on BBC1 Red Button, YouTube and BGTv with follow up interviews on local radio. His passes can be viewed on YouTube, by typing in his name or on the F.I.G. website.