“The team bronze was a momentous achievement but it was also at just the right moment in time,” says Tim Jones, performance director for British Gymnastics.
“It came about on a day when results elsewhere for Team GB weren’t quite what people thought they would be. It was a quiet day. The competition took place around tea-time with a big audience on TV, and to pick up that medal was historic.
“We could have never planned for that, but we got some great publicity from it. It’s really catapulted the sport forwards.”
To maximise the benefits of this exposure, British Gymnastics has to find a way to cope with the unprecedented interest and channel it into the top end of the sport.
In practice, that means more places to do gymnastics and more people to nurture the best talent.
“If we can coach full-time, then the gymnasts can work full-time and there’s only one way to go, and that’s forwards,” says Amanda Reddin. As Tweddle’s coach, she has spent more than a decade masterminding her success on the international stage.
“Funding has looked after us and done the job, if there’s more funding then maybe we can do a better job.”
Changing the way coaches in the UK work with their gymnasts has been central to the improvements we now see at the top level. Coaches are given “ownership” of gymnasts throughout their careers – if you take a young hopeful and turn them into a superstar, you stick with them for the journey.
Jones promises money and effort will go into finding more coaches and making them better ahead of Rio 2016.
“The interest in clubs has been huge over the past few weeks, that’s our bread and butter in terms of paying the bills,” he says.
“We’re a membership-based sport and we rely on a lot of young kids being inspired by the likes of Louis, Max, the boys’ team and Beth.
