Several local gymnasts and gymnastics coaches recently had the opportunity to sharpen their knowledge and skills when two leading personalities from British gymnastics ranks visited South Africa early in the new year.

The well-known and respected coach, Lee Woolls, is currently the head men’s coach at Birmingham Gymnastics Club in England. He is also an internationally accredited gymnastics judge and technical expert. He has coached champions at Commonwealth-, European Championship- and World Championship levels.

Among other things, he was Team Britain’s coach at the most recent Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Woolls was accompanied on his visit to South Africa by the top British gymnast, Joe Fraser.

This 25-year-old star gymnast is the 2022 European all-around and parallel bars champion and the 2019 world champion on the parallel bars. He was the first British gymnast to ever win gold in any of these events. As a member of the British Senior team since 2017, he has also won team gold, silver, and bronze on the pommel horse at in the European Artistic Gymnastic Championships. Representing England in the 2022 Commonwealth Games, Fraser won three gold medals in team, pommel horse and parallel bars.

The two Britons were invited to South Africa by the manager and head coach of the Centurion Gymnastics Club, Gerhard Ferreira, in collaboration with Gymnastics SA and Gymnastics Gauteng.

The plan for this visit was that young gymnasts, as well as coaches from all over South Africa, would have the opportunity to learn from Woolls and Fraser, while they – Wools in particular – could assess the standard of facilities and gymnasts in South Africa through first-hand knowledge.

Young gymnasts had the privilege of seeing Fraser train first-hand, learning the finer arts as he demonstrated his skills on his favourite apparatus.

The national coach, Kevin Basson, was also involved in the activities surrounding the two men’s visit and he was able to enrich his knowledge and skills through interaction with them.

In a conversation with Rekord, Woolls said that he was particularly impressed with the facilities at the Centurion Gymnastics Club. According to him, this facility is so well equipped that he can bring his British Olympic team there to train any day and that there will be no difference for them compared to what they are used to in Britain.

When he was asked why the sport in South Africa is not progressing comparably to Europe and other parts of the world, he pointed out the following aspects:

– Gymnastics is part of the school curriculum in Britain, which ensures that young children get proper exposure to it from an early age.

– The sport is supported and subsidized in Britain at all levels by the national lottery’s sports fund, which eliminates unnecessary costs for interested gymnasts.

– Clubs also benefit from this funding and there are over 300,000 active members of gymnastics clubs across Britain.

Apart from the technical assistance and their help in the gymnastics hall, both Fraser and Woolls were also involved in motivational talks and other presentations to inspire local gymnasts and coaches to continue with the sport and seize opportunities to potentially perform internationally.

Do you have more information about the story?

Please send us an email to editorial@rekord.co.za or phone us on 083 625 4114.

For free breaking and community news, visit Rekord’s websites: Rekord East

For more news and interesting articles, like Rekord on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or Instagram