By Carl Field
Ruby Evans is on track for a history-making 2024 as Wales’ top women’s artistic gymnast.
If she does ultimately go on to successfully secure selection for the Team GB women’s artistic gymnastics line-up for the Olympic Games in Paris this summer, Evans will become the first Welsh gymnast to achieve that feat since Bedwas’ Sonia Lawrence last did so for the Atlanta Games way back in 1996.
Evans also ended last year by making history when she competed as a senior for Great Britain at the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Belgium.
The last time a women’s artistic gymnast from Wales achieved that was 17 years earlier, before Evans was even born.
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And the 16-year-old Cardiff star began this year in style last weekend as she was crowned the new Welsh senior women’s champion at the Welsh Artistic Open Championships.
Evans scored 52.600 across her four pieces of apparatus in the senior women’s Open competition to win gold, ahead of Welsh team mate Abigail Roper and South Devon’s Abigail Martin.
She also led on the way on floor in the Open competition, scoring 13.450 to finish ahead of reigning British and Commonwealth floor champion Alice Kinsella (13.300) – who also won European silver on floor last year.
Evans also bagged Open bronze on the uneven bars while, in the Welsh Closed senior women’s competition, she took all-around, uneven bars and floor gold.
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Scheduled to compete at the English Championships in Telford at the beginning of March, Evans will also then bid to make her mark once again at the Artistic British Championships in Liverpool next month.
A former double junior British all-around champion, Evans competed at the domestic showpiece as a senior for the first time in 2023, becoming British vault champion and finishing fifth in her first senior women’s all-around competition.
Meanwhile, Penybont’s Ellie Lewis – a team bronze medallist for Team GB at the European Youth Olympic Festival last summer – won the Welsh Closed junior all-around title and secured silver in the junior women’s Open event.
Lewis, the 2022 Welsh and British Aspire all-around champion, will also be looking to impress in Liverpool again next month.
Last year she won gold on uneven bars and bronze in both the all-around and on floor in the junior women’s competition at the British Championships.
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On the men’s side, Commonwealth Games star Joe Cemlyn-Jones was once again the headliner at the Welsh in the senior men’s competition and he certainly didn’t disappoint, going 78.069 all-around to bag the Welsh men’s senior Open and Closed titles.
The Team Wales man, who trains out of the City of Birmingham club, top scored on the rings with 13.667 in the Open competition, where he also grabbed silver on parallel bars and on the high bar as well as bronze on floor.
He also took home golds on the rings, parallel bars and high bar in the Closed competition.
His Birmingham teammate Jacob Edwards reigned supreme on the floor, scoring 14.334 to collect both Open and Closed gold on that piece.
In the men’s Under 18 competition Elliot Vernon – who was part of the Wales team that won Northern European men’s team silver alongside Edwards and Cemlyn-Jones in Sweden last November – won the Welsh Under 18 Closed title and was second in the Open event.
Full results from the 2024 Welsh Artistic Open Championships are available via gymdata.co.uk
2024 Welsh Championships
Joe Cemlyn-Jones HB @Joe_Cemlyn
Winston Powell VT
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— International Gymnast Media (@2023igmedia) February 18, 2024