Hert­ford­shire Level 5 Team Cham­pi­onships.
Clubs from around Hert­ford­shire put together their best teams to fight for the Hert­ford­shire Level 5 Team Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy on Sat­ur­day 22^nd Octo­ber.  It was a tough com­pe­ti­tion with 7 teams entered from all over Hertfordshire.

BGC Team: Char­lotte, Lucy, Sophie & Lizzy.
The team did well with their team scores placed them in 4^th on vault, 4^th on Bars, 4^th on Beam and 2^nd on Floor, but unfor­tu­nately the 3 falls off beam saw them loss Team Bronze and fin­ish in 4^th place overall.

Indi­vid­u­ally the gym­nasts did well.  All gym­nasts beat their BP scores from the Indi­vid­ual com­pe­ti­tion in Sep­tem­ber with Lucy fin­ish­ing in 3^rd place, Char­lotte in 7^th place, Lizzy in 16^th and Sophie in 22^nd

Well done girls!!!!!

Gym­nast:
Con­grat­u­la­tions to Amelia for being selected to rep­re­sent Hert­ford­shire as part of Hertfordshire’s Level 3 B team in the East­ern Regions Inter Coun­ties Teams Com­pe­ti­tion on Sun­day 13^th Novem­ber.
This is a great hon­our for Amelia as she has only been com­pet­ing at Level 4 this year, but has been selected for the Level 3 team. The Hert­ford­shire County Coach, Svet­lana Trot­ter, feels the stan­dard of Amelia’s Cur­rent rou­tines exceed level 4 and are of a high enough stan­dard to sup­port Hertfordshire’s B team in the upcom­ing com­pe­ti­tion. Amelia will be join­ing forces with 4 other gym­nasts from dif­fer­ent clubs around Here­ford­shire to form the HERTS B Team.
Coach:
The County can only nom­i­nate 2 coaches to work with each team dur­ing the com­pe­ti­tion. For the third year run­ning Claire Thorn­ton (Head of Women’s at BGC) has been selected as one of the Team Coaches. She will be work­ing with the B team dur­ing the final train­ing ses­sion and on the day of competition.

Good news!!!

We did it, our appli­ca­tion and pre­sen­ta­tion was successful.  £3,100.00 is on it’s way for new foam equipment.

There were 19 groups giv­ing pre­sen­ta­tions to win votes from the HP4 residents.

We fin­ished in 9^th, with only the first 11 win­ning the fund­ing they had applied for.

We’d just like to say a big thank you to all par­ents and gym­nasts who turned up to sup­port and vote for the club.  We couldn’t have done it with­out you.

Thanks also to Claire for organ­is­ing the bid etc — Well Done!

DeeTV filmed the vote which you can view here.

Amelia trav­elled to Ipswich on Sun­day 9^th Octo­ber to com­pete in the 10/11 year old cat­e­gory at the Level 4 Regional Finals.

She per­formed well on Floor and Vault, but unfor­tu­nately it wasn’t Amelia’s day on beam.  With 2 falls, it cost her the Over­all Gold and saw her fin­ish in 8^th place.  Her superb bar score of 11.750 meant she was in the run­ning for the Bars Appa­ra­tus Medals.  The appa­ra­tus medals are not awarded in age cat­e­gories but over the whole of the Level 4 for Com­pe­ti­tion, which meant 39 gym­nasts where com­pet­ing for the appa­ra­tus medals.  Amelia was lying in 2^nd place at the end of Round 1 and had a ner­vous wait for the remain­ing 23 gym­nasts to com­pete in Round 2.  Her high score was too dif­fi­cult for the older gym­nasts to beat and Amelia was awarded the Sil­ver medal for Bars. 

Well done Amelia!!!

Make sure you catch all the TV cov­er­age below…

Lat­est News…

British girls secure Olympic qual­i­fi­ca­tion!
Great Britain will be rep­re­sented by a full women’s gym­nas­tics team at the Lon­don 2012 Olympics after a nail-biting fin­ish in the artis­tic gym­nas­tics World Cham­pi­onship qual­i­fi­ca­tion ensured them the all-important top 8 spot and an Olympic team place. The team of Beth Twed­dle, Becky Downie, Han­nah Whe­lan, Danu­sia Fran­cis, Imo­gen Cairns and Jenni Pinches scored 220.553 points to fin­ish in 8^th posi­tion ensur­ing a clear pas­sage through to the Lon­don 2012 Olympics. 

British boys miss auto­matic 2012 place
Great Britain men’s team nar­rowly failed in their mis­sion for a top 8 spot and instant Olympic qual­i­fi­ca­tion after fin­ish­ing 10^th in the men’s qual­i­fy­ing com­pe­ti­tion at the 2011 artis­tic gym­nas­tics World Cham­pi­onships. How­ever, Daniel Purvis and Louis Smith both excelled and headed to the all-around and pom­mel finals respec­tively. The British team will now com­pete (along with teams placed 9–16) in the Olympic Test event at the Green­wich Dome in Jan­u­ary with the aim of a top 4 spot in order to progress the full team to Lon­don 2012.

Daniel Purvis 4^th, Han­nah Whe­lan 9^th — in their respec­tive all-around finals!

BBC cov­er­age

Tues­day 11 Octo­ber
Women’s Team Final
·    1050–1310, BBC Red Button/online
·    1300–1500, BBC Two/online

Wednes­day 12 Octo­ber
Men’s Team Final
·    0950–1240, BBC Red Button/online
·    1330–1530, BBC Two/online

Thurs­day 13 Octo­ber
Women’s All Around Final
·    0950–1155, BBC Red Button/online
·    1300–1500, BBC Two/online

Fri­day 14 Octo­ber
Men’s All Around Final
·    1050–1350, BBC Red Button/online
·    1300–1500, BBC Two/online

Sat­ur­day 15 Octo­ber
Indi­vid­ual Appa­ra­tus Finals
·    0520–0830, BBC Red Button/online
·    1630–1800, BBC Two/online

Sun­day 16 Octo­ber
Indi­vid­ual Appa­ra­tus Finals
·    0550–0905, BBC Red Button/online
·    1600–1730, BBC Two/online

Daniel Purvis has been crowned the 2011 men’s gym­nas­tics British cham­pion. Hav­ing shared the crown with Sam Hunter in 2010, Dan made cer­tain of being the out­right win­ner in a nail-biting com­pe­ti­tion with his last rou­tine, a 16.000 on vault, secur­ing the title. William Trood, Frank Baines, Brinn Bevan and Loukas Jones took the age-group titles.

Full details here

Online video of the comp here

GB has not one but two Senior men’s cham­pi­ons as Sam Hunter and Daniel Purvis tied for all-around gold at the men’s artis­tic gym­nas­tics cham­pi­onships in Leices­ter this weekend.

The two recently placed an impres­sive 5^th (Purvis) and 9^th (Hunter) at the World Cham­pi­onships. Purvis also won bronze in Rot­ter­dam on floor, which also was his high­est score at the british champs too.

5 mem­bers of Berkham­sted G.C. top girls squads met Russ­ian Rhyth­mic Olympic Cham­pi­ons Tatiana Gor­bunova and Mar­garita Aliy­chuk at County Squad train­ing on Sun­day 7^th November. 

Poppy and Amelia (stand­ing front right in black leo­tards) were put through their paces by Tatiana and Mar­garita dur­ing a tuff stretch­ing session. 

Although stretch­ing is a very impor­tant part of Artis­tic Gym­nas­tics it is a vital part of Rhyth­mic Gym­nas­tics.  Tatiana and Mar­garita showed the girls just how flex­i­ble they could become if they stretched prop­erly every session.

Amaz­ing Gold, Sil­ver and Bronze won at the 2010 World cham­pi­onships appa­ra­tus finals by British Gymnasts!

Daniel Purvis led the days com­pe­ti­tion by per­form­ing a bril­liant Floor rou­tine to gain a bronze medal swiftly fol­lowed by a nail-biting Pom­mels final for Louis Smith who just missed out on gold by 0.1 to gain the Sil­ver medal posi­tion with the high­est dif­fi­culty to date. To close the day, Beth Twed­dle com­pleted a stun­ningly clean rou­tine on asym­met­ric Bars to win the Gold medal place and prove British Gym­nas­tics is def­i­nitely on the rise in the world arena.

Daniel and Louis’s routines

A-Bars final

Full cov­er­age of Day 1 appa­ra­tus finals.

Not only that, but the British Mens Squad qual­i­fied in 4^th place over­all, a fan­tas­tic achieve­ment as they only hoped to be in the top 25 this year! Read here for more with video footage.