The Men’s Squad from Huntingdon Gymnastics Club emerged triumphant last weekend following a closely fought British Team Championships, held in Ipswich Suffolk. The 5 man Team amassed a score of 255.050, narrowly beating South Essex into second place with 253.35. Leeds Carnegie came third with 245.4.
The Team, consisting of Olympians Louis Smith and Daniel Keatings, together with Luke Folwell, Ahmahd Thomas, and Alex Hedges, worked solidly on all apparatus, but errors on Parallel Bars opened up the competition. Good performances on Pommel Horse and Rings allowed the team to retain the title for the 4th consecutive year, a tremendous achievement. Keatings was top all around scorer with Folwell in second place and Smith performing a clean exercise on his specialist apparatus. Huntingdon showed great depth in fielding a second team in the same event with Max Bennet, Cameron Mackenzie, Sam Oldham, Alex Brailsford, and Josh Goddard working well to finish a creditable 6th behind Hinckley and Loughborough Students.
Head Coach, Paul Hall, was pleased with the result: ‘This was excellent preparation for the forthcoming European Championships at the end of the month, and very satisfying to retain this historic Trophy, the oldest in British Gymnastics, for another year. The guys showed great spirit and now have a few weeks to iron out the creases before moving on to Milan at the end of the month. Our younger boys showed some great potential to be able to emulate the successes of our seniors in the years to come.’