By Carl Field
Ruby Evans and Joe Cemlyn-Jones led the way with medals for Wales in a successful foray at the Northern European Championships.
Team medals for the men’s and women’s teams along with a host of individual medals – it was another hugely successful Northern European Gymnastics Championships.
The artistic gymnasts were in Halmstad, Sweden over the weekend and came away with both individual and team medals.
On Saturday, the women’s team of Evans, Poppy-Grace Stickler, Annais Kamanga, Evie Flage-Donovan, along with twin sisters Abigail Roper and Emily Roper retained the title won by Wales last year in the women’s team competition.
Kamanga came in to replace the injured Mali Morgan, who had originally been named in the team for the event.
Wales bagged gold after putting a total of 198.696 on the scoreboard, to win convincingly from England (189.627) in second and Norway (186.127) in the bronze medal position.
It’s the third time in the last four editions of the Northern Europeans the women’s team have won gold for Wales, following on from 2022 and 2019. There was no event in 2020 due to Covid.
There was also a brilliant individual all-around gold medal for Great Britain star and Paris Olympics contender Evans, who totalled 50.565 across her four pieces.
Wales also had four of the top five placings in the women’s all-around competition with Abigail Roper bagging bronze with 48.799, just ahead of Emily Roper (48.766) and Flage-Donovan (48.599).
Meanwhile on the men’s side, there was a fantastic silver medal in the team competition for Jacob Edwards, Cemlyn-Jones, Josh Cook, Theo-Amari Ochana, Henry Lewis and Elliot Vernon.
The team totalled 308.160 and only narrowly finished behind gold medallists and hosts Sweden (309.124).
Cemlyn-Jones went 78.199 all-around to secure individual bronze with Vernon fifth (76.899).
Then, on Sunday the individual apparatus finals took centre stage and with it came more medal success.
Emily Roper and Evans grabbed gold on the vault and floor respectively, with Roper third on vault. Flage-Donovan was second on beam and Stickler – another Paris 2024 hopeful – third on the uneven bars.
Lewis secured silver on the vault, with Cemlyn-Jones second on high bar and third on the rings with his Commonwealth Games teammate from Birmingham 2022, Cook, taking bronze on the high bar.
