GB's top gymnast Beth Tweddle has re-iterated in recent interviews that she wants to peak and wrap up her successful career at the games. The question is where will her departure leave British gymnastics after the games. 'Queen Elizabeth' at Rewriting Russian Gymnastics made a great comment in her latest post on the Russian team.
A gymnastics team is only as good as its reserves; if a team cannot win without its leading performer, then the chance of leading the sport more than momentarily is pretty poor.
The same stands for the GB team. Their stocks have been rising in the last olympic cycle, largely due to Beth's medal success and leadership. The difficulty will be maintaining this overall success and delivering new stars on the way to Rio 2016.
Hopefully some of the current crop of gymnasts (such as Hannah Whelan) will stick around and lead the younger gymnasts on for a few years. GB has the coaching expertise to develop new talent (albeit focussed in a few main gyms) and plenty of youngsters who could add more difficulty over the next few years.
GB is a long way off contending with the big guns (China, USA, Russia) at the moment but below that are a lot of nations whose positions can shift based on who has an 'off-day'. With enough strong all-around gymnasts and some special talents on individual apparatus, a Beth-less team could still continue to contend.
Where the US keep talking about bars as their 'weak' event. GB's scores could rocket if we could get a crop of strong vaulters capable of something bigger than a full-twisting yurchenko!
We're not there yet, but I think we will be soon...
Team 2012-2016
back row L-R - Lizzie Beddoe, Ruby Harrold, Jess Hogg, Billie Mackenzie, Ruby Straw, Loriah James...
front row L-R - Amy Sharp, Venus Romaeo, Laura Mitchell and Rebecca Tunney
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