Report by Simon Parkinson

EIGHT elite King Edmund Gym Club performers are back in business and set on showing they can be stars of the big Swiss stage this summer.

The 12-18 men’s age group comprising Joel Compton, Alex Reeve, Harry Hole and Vinnie Panetta are to take part in crucial trial events at Lilleshall National Sports Centre in Shropshire over the weekend of April 24 and 25, hoping to prove they are worthy of a place in Great Britain’s team bound for the FIG World Acrobatic Championships in Geneva between June 23 and 29.

They will be joined in trial action by 12-18 (age) women’s pairing of Polly Maggs and Chloe Hopkins along with fellow King Edmund GC competitors Dylan Howells and Natasha Hutchinson, who are also out to claim a place in the GB party as a new and talented senior mixed pairing.

Keeping everything crossed for the highly-popular Yate-based organisation’s eight acrogymnastic aces, club manager Mark Thorne said: “This is about as big as it gets for our sport when it comes to what’s at stake.

“After all that has been going on with the pandemic and the effect it has had on all our lives, we as a club are very excited for our eight gymnasts involved in these forthcoming trial events, and at such a prestigious venue too.

“They will have their work cut out as they’ll be competing against gymnasts representing top clubs from all over Great Britain, all desperate and determined to be selected for the GB team heading to Switzerland for the World Championships in June.”

Harry Hole will enthusiastically re-enter the gymnastics arena as King Eddies’ experienced acrobat, having won the 13-19 men’s pair event with then-partner Marcus Flint in the 2016 World Championships held in China, before going on to scoop a silver medal three years on in the European Championships’ 11-16 age category partnering George Paget in an Israel spectacle.

Of others preparing for Lilleshall, Thorne explained: “Polly and Chloe are a really promising and upcoming pair who have been working together for a while, and Dylan and Natasha, despite having only been paired together since late last year, have been very successful gymnasts for us in their own right in domestic tournaments.

“All of them now have a big opportunity to show what they’re about at world level and have every reason to attack the Lilleshall trials with confidence.

“Obviously it’s been a strange build-up for them all, not to mention their coaches, with our Yate International Gymnastics Centre facility at Yate Leisure Centre having been shut down over lockdown.

“It meant we had to relocate our gym mats for our Lilleshall trialists and their coaches to a soft play centre the other side of Yate which we’ve long had association with, but we also had the considerable help of Bristol Hawks Gymnastics Club in Easton and another club, Splitz Gymnastics, of Weston-super-Mare.

“Both centres allowed us to use their facilities and we’re very grateful to them for the gesture, along with the fact we had special dispensation allowing our coaches to coach and eight gymnasts to practise as they are classed as elite sportspeople preparing for a world championship event.”

Thorne added: “We had 1500 gymnasts and 33 coaches on our books at King Eddies when we had to shut down the first time around last year, and since then the stop-start situation has been extremely unsettling for everyone involved.

“Now the leisure centre has reopened again it’s meant our eight gymnasts and coaches can make their final trial preparations back on familiar ground, whilst we have every confidence young people from the area in general will be chomping at the bit to get back to the gymnastics they love.”