Five, seven-year-old gymnasts from the Forest of Dean Gymnastics Club took part in the inaugural ‘The Spark’ competition held at Bath University and won several medals.

’The Spark’ competition held at Bath University was designed to give young aspiring gymnasts their first taste of external competition.

Gymnasts had to compete on floor and vault and perform a compulsory set routine to test their Range and Conditioning. To win a gold, silver or bronze medal gymnasts had to reach set scores.

The Forest’s top scorer Lily Goodway came away with a silver medal. She performed confidently, showing tight routines on all apparatus throughout the competition. On vault, Lily was placed 6th out of 34, with a score of 13.3.

Anastasia Hughes, Amelia Seal, Eloise Smith and Yasmina Alzheyrey were all awarded bronze medals.

In Range and Conditioning Yasmina was top Forest scorer with 12.4 closely followed by Amelia the with 12.2 and Anastasia with 12.1. On floor Eloise Smith took the top Forest place with 10.6, coming 12th overall.

The young gymnasts tried hard and competed confidently and benefitted from the experience of competing away from home.

While the girls were in Bath on Sunday, the Forest of Dean boys competed at Baskerville’s Gym in Bath in the ‘Withy King’ competition, on Saturday. For many of them this was their first competition. They all performed well and came home with a total of seven medals.

In the under seven competition, Angus Phillips and Elliott Baker both won gold medals. Elliott won his for vault and Angus for Trampette. Angus who came 4th overall out of 20 gymnasts also won a bronze medal on Vault. Elliott was close behind in 6th place overall.

In the under nine competition, James Hadfield came 7th out off 11 gymnasts. He had the third highest score on trampette, but due to a tie for third place, he narrowly missed a bronze medal by 0.03.

Success in the afternoon came in the form of two gold, one silver and two bronze medals for Sam Perkins and Finley Smith who competed in the under 11 competition.

Finley came second overall, winning a silver medal, while Sam just missed bronze by 0.2. Finley won gold on vault and bronze on trampette while Sam took the gold on trampette with his full twisting straight front.