GYMNASTICS: Over 1200 budding gymnasts from Australia and New Zealand will descend on Melbourne this week for the Australian Gymnastics Championships.

The event which begins on Wednesday the 21st at the Hisense Arena will double as the selection event for the Artistic Gymnastics team to head to the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in Nanjing, China in August.

The National Championships will also play host to a number of Olympic, Commonwealth Games and world championship gold medallists who will all be vying for a spot on the 2014 Australian Commonwealth Games Team.

Among those include 2008 Olympian Olivia Vivian who knows all too well how important events like the YOG are for young athletes who attended the Australian Youth Olympic Festival in 2013.

“It’s not very often you get to experience something similar to an Olympic games apart from the Commonwealth Games but even then you just don’t have the powerhouse’s like China, Russia and the USA competing alongside you,” Vivian said.

“It’s the kind of experience you can’t buy and it is a really good opportunity for them.”

It is fair to say the competition will be fierce as athletes compete for four spots on the Australian Youth Olympic Team, including one woman and one man for artistic gymnastics and one woman and one man for the trampolining events.

“After speaking with a few of the other young athletes who competed at the Australian Youth Olympic Festival in past years, I personally think it is definitely a goal for them and they will be showing up to nationals with their best routines,” Vivian said.

It is expected that the women’s nominees will be known on Wednesday followed by the men’s on Thursday.

As well as these gymnasts, teenager Tara Wilkie has been nominated to the AOC and is likely to be selected as part of the 2014 AYOT after qualifying a spot in the Rhythmic Gymnastics at a YOG trial in New Zealand earlier this month.

Australia is taking a smaller Gymnastics team to China compared to Singapore in 2010, when nine were selected including Angela Donald, who won a bronze medal for her performance in the women’s beam event in the Artistic component of the competition.

Over 156 athletes will compete in Gymnastics at the Youth Olympics Games in Nanjing, China from the 17-27 August at the Olympic Sports Centre Gymnasium.

Laura Judd

@AUSOlympicTeam