Olympic years tend to coincide with spikes when it comes to gymnastics participation in this country, but on the eve of the Tokyo Games, fears are growing that this one will be remembered for a reversal of the trend.
Courtesy of the exploits of Beth Tweddle, Louis Smith and Max Whitlock at London 2012, British Gymnastics reported an increase of 100,000 in recreational gymnastics members over the next four years, and a 13 per cent rise around Rio took the overall number to 1.1million active gymnasts.
For a generation inspired then, read a generation lost now. Such have been the wide-ranging effects of the Covid pandemic on grassroots competitors.
British gymanstics is hoping for an Olympic boost after taking a hit during the pandemic
With club coaches nationwide telling tales of children being lost from all age groups and abilities, it feels like a fresh set of Olympian role models in Joe Fraser, the Gadirova twins, Jennifer and Jessica, Alice Kinsella and Giarnni Regini-Moran cannot arrive in living rooms soon enough.
Chloe Carey, head of women’s artistic at Harrogate Gymnastics, has experienced both ends of the spectrum. ‘We only opened in 2009 and in 2012 we got a huge surge in numbers. We had between 600 and 700 kids, and that shot up to 1,200 during that summer. Numbers go up with every Olympics, but we have also seen increases when the sport hits the mainstream media.’
Courtesy of a wretched 15 months comprising three lockdowns and restrictions on access to their facilities, Harrogate have reverted to pre-2012 levels.
‘From the recreational side, we’ve lost hundreds, especially the younger ones who don’t remember what it was like when they used to come and so they’re out of the habit,’ Carey says.
The success of stars like Max Whitlock at Rio in 2016 led to a surge in participation levels
‘Covid has removed all the fun from what we do. If we are running classes online, to be safe for the gymnasts physically you must have a period within the session that concentrates on conditioning. The body needs the core strength to perform skills, but the little ones come because they love throwing themselves around, having fun, doing some cartwheels, not to do that.
‘And it was a similar story even for some of the older ones. Let’s face it, gymnastics for them is the bars, the vault, the beam. Take all that out, and just do the strength and flexibility stuff, and it’s just not the same.
‘For the first month, training at home in their bedrooms or front gardens had its novelty value, and they were entertained by that. But by the third lockdown, they’d had enough and that’s when we lost most of our more senior gymnasts from women’s artistic to other disciplines.’
One of gymnastics’ key principles is continuity. Put simply, there has been too much change. Too much disruption.
Nicky Nicol, who runs the Twist & Flip Academy in Grimsby, says switching to Zoom classes was a similar turn-off for her gymnasts. But the reasons for 300 saying goodbye to the club were manifold and in some
