Three more medals for GB as Tweddle hails progress

On the final day of the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Jakarta, Indonesia, former world champion Beth Tweddle praised the progress of British gymnastics.

The team continued its excellence on the floor with silver for Ruby Evans and bronze for Abigail Martin, making Joe Fraser the first British gymnast to do so. He placed third overall.

Evans also won the first individual medal at the World Gymnastics Championships as a Welsh gymnast.

After Jake Jarman and Luke Whitehouse won the men’s floor final on Friday, it marked the British team’s remarkable 24 hours.

Tweddle, who won Britain’s first women’s world floor title in 2009, told BBC Sport: “It’s just incredible to see the journey that British gymnastics as a whole has taken. It’s the best country in the world.”

Four out of the six floor medals awarded at this championships have come home from where we were 20 years ago.

Britain’s five medal haul in the championships, which included Jessica Gadirova’s second women’s world floor victory, only ever be slightly better.

British Gymnastics performance director Dave Hart attributed the success of this year to a dedicated program that involved coaches working closely with local clubs.

He said, “It’s been an incredible summation of a community’s hard work.”

We have a top-notch program connected to our clubs, they say. It is amazing to see how our coaching community and our gymnasts work together to deliver what we have seen so far in recent days.

With a 13.666 overall, Martin placed third at her first World Championships, while Evans, 18, placed second behind Japan’s Aiko Sugihara.

Sabrina Maneca-Voinea, a 17-year-old gymnast, was awarded bronze because of her higher execution score, despite having the same mark as her Romanian counterpart.

Fraser, 26, won a historic first bronze in the high bar this time, becoming the first British gymnast to win the parallel bars competition in 2019.