TWO youngsters from Pinewood Gymnastic Club represented the South of England in the British Gymnastics National Grade 4 & 3 Final in Stoke on Trent recently.

Dixie Lindsey and Helena Vinall were part of the five-strong squad and completed all five pieces in Compulsory Grade 3.

Dixie had a memorable tournament after going clean on every piece of apparatus, while displaying a fantastic bar routine which placed her an impressive third in Great Britain.

It helped her achieve 10th place overall with an AA score of 61.300 out of 54 gymnasts from all over the country.

Helena had a couple of costly falls which placed her 40th overall with a AA of 55.450 The South team placed sixth overall.

  •  PINEWOOD gymnasts excelled at the Spring Series 1 and Spring Series 2 events in Coventry and Sheffield earlier this month.

The tournaments were qualifiers for the British Championships in Liverpool in July.

There were four newcomers in the women 9-10 category; Sophie Barrington, Grace Benton, Lottie Clarke and Evie Palmer-Smith.

In Coventry, all 9-10 girls performed extremely well with Lottie securing her first bronze medal. Sophie scored 54.1 to finish ninth, Grace 53.7 for 14th and Evie in 17th.

In the 9-10 men’s category, Sebastian Williams scored 60.9 to earn his first gold medal.

Pinewood entered Georgina Elliott, Bethany Austin and Izzy Clarke in the 11-12 women category. All three impressed with Clarke taking silver with 58.2, Elliott taking bronze with 57.4 and Austin placing 10th with 53.3.

Lottie Clarke (56.1), Benton (52.7), Palmer-Smith (51.7) and Barrington (42.4) also performed well.  Pinewood’s Scarlett Hutton just missed out on qualifying for the British finals after placing 12th with a score of 54.9 in the Sheffield event, having moved from artistic to tumbling.

However, Sebastian Williams produced two fantastic routines to claim the gold with 64.4.

Georgina Elliott put together two superb runs for the bronze medal, while Austin finished seventh with 55.9 and Clarke scored 51.2, all qualifying for the British finals.

In the 11-12 men category, Jack Williams won silver in the first event and the bronze in the second to reach the finals.

William Cowen stunned the crowds at both events by landing gold at the first then producing two clean runs with a triple back somersault in Sheffield for a score of 63.4 and another gold.

In the 17-18 women’s category, Tilly Nash (63.1) took silver, while in the Senior Women category, Eleanor Head scored 62.74 to win gold, then 63.5 for fourth in the second event.

Yasmin Taite, on her return from the European Championships where she helped win the Team European title, scored 63.3 and all qualifying for the British Championships.