Six gymnasts from the same club join Team GB

Six young stars from an acrobatic gymnastics club have been selected to represent Team GB.

The acro-gymnasts, from King Edmund Gym Club in Yate, South Gloucestershire, are now a step closer to competing in major tournaments such as world championships.

Shayla, one of the six, said finding out they were selected was "surreal" after years of training. She told the BBC's Extra Time programme: "We've been working hard for it for so long."

In acrobatic gymnastics, partners or groups perform choreographed floor-based routines set to music, using each other for lifts, throws and balances.

Club manager Mark Thorne said: "It's a great achievement for them, the coaching team, and it's a great recognition for the club."

Acrobatic gymnastics is not included in the upcoming Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028 but it has been rising in popularity in recent years, according to British Gymnastics.

The six who were selected are:

• Shayla, from Yate
• Kian Hawks, 19, from Weston-super-Mare
• Kimmi, from Yate
• Esme Mathias, 20, from Yate
• Ruby, from Swindon, Wiltshire
• Lottie, from Bath

Hawks said there was "no bigger sense of pride" after being chosen for Team GB.

"It's your one motivation in the gym and it finally happens," he said.

"All those years of hard work suddenly come bursting out in that one moment where you hear you're a GB athlete for the sport you love."

Lottie said: "Not enough people know about acro-gymnastics... We should be in the Olympics as well, we need more recognition."

Mathias said the sport had taught him "so many life lessons", including patience and "care with each other".

"I just think, 'Thank goodness I do gym, how would I know all these things if I didn't?'"

Thorne said that, each week, 1,500 children enter the family-run club's doors.

He said the club had been expanding for more than 40 years, starting out at a basketball court behind a school.

It is now based at Yate International Gymnastics Centre.

Thorne said the club's popularity took off after one of its gymnasts, Douglas Fordyce, won ITV reality show Britain's Got Talent in 2010 with acro-gymnastics group Spelbound.

"Our numbers have been phenomenal since then," he said.

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