Gymnasts have just completed their competition at the Australian Gymnastics Championships which was held on the Gold Coast over the last week.
Once again, Finlay Jones from Cooroy Gymnastics Club has defied the odds and become the level 10 Australian Champion on pommel horse.
In what has been a tough year for the Cooroy gymnast, Fin has had to limit his training due to health issues, a brutal university schedule and an injury.
The lack of training and preparation in the lead up to the event meant he was only able to attend one competition and had to adjust his expectations and routines accordingly.
The first day is the team and all around competition and didn’t go as planned with Finlay landing and injuring himself on the first tumbling pass on floor and unable to complete his routine.
Even with his injury he stepped up to the next and final apparatus to post another team counting score to help Queensland to second place in the team event.
On day two Finlay was unable to compete on floor or vault due to his injury and had to remove his higher difficulty dismounts from parallel bars, rings and high bar meaning that he had a much lower starting value on two of his favourite apparatus.
Even without a dismount on these apparatus he was still able to finish 4th on High Bar, 5th on Parallel Bars and 7th on Rings.
The only apparatus he could land without further injuring his knees was pommel. After not making a routine on pommels all year Fin dug deep and held on to complete what was a gold medal performance becoming the level 10 Pommel national champion.
Finlay credited his win to the support given to him by his coach Greg Smyth with his understanding and support helping to balance his expectations with his current capacity and maintain a positive outlook in preparation for the event.
