British Championships 2013

Senior All Around Competition

What an exciting day of competition! There were thrills and spills as the seniors battled for the title of British Champion 2013. In the end it came down to who could control their nerves and stay calm when it mattered.

Gabby Jupp - 2013 British Champion
Having won the Junior title last year at the British Championships as well as coming from a fantastic competition at the American Cup recently, Gabby was definitely one of the favourites for this competition. She showed her usual calm approach under pressure and performed four clean and well presented routines to take the title with a solid All Around score of 56.150. She was delightful to watch throughout and her beam routine was (as expected) superb. She has also qualified to three apparatus finals tomorrow (bars, beam and floor) where she will be hoping to add more medals to today's Gold.

Charlie Fellows - Silver
Charlie had a fantastic competition today, showing off her skill and style on each piece of apparatus. She is a lovely gymnast to watch and executed her routines beautifully, especially on floor where she set the highest score of the day with a 14.200. She kept her calm throughout and really deserved her second place finish. She qualified to the bars, beam and floor finals and I cannot wait to see her in action again tomorrow.

Niamh Rippin - Bronze
I was really impressed with Niamh today, she looked strong and confident right up until the last minute when she had an unfortunate fall on her beam dismount (her last apparatus). Her powerful style was really shown off today and it was great to see her compete so well - the Bronze medal was a just reward. She has seemed to steadily improve over the last few competitions we have seen her in and today was certainly no exception. She qualified to the vault, bars and floor finals where she will be hoping to defend her titles from last year on vault and floor.

Other notable gymnasts include Ruby Harrold, who finished fourth in the All Around and impressed with a stunning bars routine. It is an incredible routine and one that I cannot wait to see again tomorrow. Georgina Hockenhull also impressed me with a good 5th place finish and three apparatus finals (bars, beam and floor). Hannah Whelan and Angel Romaeo both had unfortunate outings with multiple falls, leaving them much further down the field than expected. Hannah was still very impressive in the main though and managed to finish a credible 8th place despite her two falls on bars and one on floor. Becky Downie was yet again competing only bars and yet again set the highest score with her fantastic new routine. She will be one to watch in the bars final tomorrow. Lisa Mason impressed with her fabulous vaulting, following her win on vault at the English Championships with a place in tomorrow's vault final which was helped by an absolutely nailed handspring front pike as her second vault.

It really has been an exciting and pretty unpredictable competition. Congratulations to all the gymnasts who competed today and good luck to all those competing in the apparatus finals. The finals can be seen live via BGTV from 10.30am (24th March). Details can be found on http://www.british-gymnastics.org/site/.