The Senior Womens Team-Gym team qualified to represent GB at the Euros back in April when they became the British Champions for the second year in a row.
Over the last 6 months the girls have worked hard to add to their difficulty and stand with their heads held high next to countries such as Denmark,Finland and Sweden who have amazing TG programmes and over the past 10 years have dominated Team Gym, a relatively new discipline to gymnastics.
The team arrived in Ghent on Tuesday spending the next two days training in the competition arena, which holds over 3000 spectators!
The day of the qualifiers the girls were clearly nervous, having to open the competition on the floor. They danced to a 50`s theme, which made the audience stand up and take notice of this new team from GB.
Next up was tumble and, with only one mistake,the girls made many more people notice. In Team Gym, gymnasts perform very difficult tumbles, with other gymnasts tumbling very closely in front and behind,adding even more risk to already big skills.
Next up was trampette, our weakest piece. The girls have worked hard to add in a double round - 3 double fronts followed,(closely)by 3 half-in-back-outs in pike. They all stuck!
They then finished on double twists and again they all stuck and ran out to cheers from the audience.
Before we went out to Ghent we didn`t have a goal to make the finals, just to go and look strong - which the girls did. But they did better than that. They were the 7th Highest country.
In previous Euros,the top 8 went through to the finals, but this time it was only the top 6 -- we missed it by one place!!
Some girls thought they were too old to carry on at 16 - 22, but with teams of 40+ only just retiring,the girls are now aiming to make the final 6 in two years time.
Congratulations girls, and a big thank you to everyone who helped us raise the money to get there,by buying cakes and raffle tickets.
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