Becky Downie believes gymnastics is finally changing for the better. Sixteen years after her debut as a teenager at Beijing 2008 and four years since she blew the whistle on welfare issues in the sport, Downie has been selected for a third Olympic Games.
In 2020, Downie and younger sister Ellie spoke out about “cruel”, “ingrained” and “completely normalised” abusive issues in the sport. The Whyte Review, published in 2022, found systemic evidence of physical and emotional abuse within gymnastics in Britain.
Ellie retired from the sport aged just 23 to prioritise her mental health but her older sibling returned to the sport, determined to bow out on her own terms.
A first Olympic medal would represent a perfect endgame but seeing reform in her sport is the ultimate reward.
“It was always something that when I retired I knew I wanted to speak on and I didn’t really quite understand why so many hadn’t at the time,” said Downie.
“It was too much of an important cause to not put our voices to it and that’s why we chose to do it. We just didn’t expect what came off the back of it.
“Me and Ellie don’t regret what we did. It’s really encouraging to see the direction the sport is going in. We had started seeing changes before we spoke out, they just weren’t necessarily out to the public.
“But compared to when I was young and even through Beijing and London there was a massive change by around 2018. I think it just took too long.”
After the trauma of missing out on Tokyo, Downie lost brother Josh to a heart attack in 2021.
She has dealt with grief, a ruptured Achilles and a host of other physical and mental issues that made the path to Paris seem insurmountable.
“I don’t think I’d still be here if it wasn’t a strong person,” said Downie, who is one of over 1,000 elite athletes on UK Sport’s National Lottery-funded World Class Programme, allowing her to train full time, have access to the world’s best coaches and benefit from pioneering medical support.
“At points, it has felt like an impossible task. Looking back, I think to actually be in this position does feel like a bit of a miracle.
“I am really proud mainly of the fight that I chose to stay and what I’ve actually pushed through but honestly, if anybody asked me to do it again, I wouldn’t, because it’s been that hard.”
Downie is joined in a reshaped women’s artistic gymnastics team by Alice Kinsella, Georgia Mae-Fenton and teenagers Ruby Evans and Abi Martin.
Jessica Gadirova, crowned world champion on floor in 2022, and Ondine Achampong have both been ruled out by ACL injuries.
Great Britain’s most successful gymnast Max Whitlock leads the men’s team in his fourth and final Olympics. Joe Fraser is the only other male gymnast with Olympic experience with debutants Jake Jarman, Harry Hepworth and Luke Whitehouse completing the quintet.
Whitlock said: “For three out of the five it’s their first time and people can look at that as not a lot of experience, but they’ve got experience in every other major.
“It’s almost refreshing. If your team is full of people at their first Olympics, for them the excitement is at an all-time high, that creates a buzz and a bit of atmosphere.
“If we pull that together we can do some great things. The absolute dream is to get a team medal, it’s been a few cycles and we’ve just been outside of it. We are extremely close, it just needs to go right on the day.”
Having been selected for every major in the last three years, Courtney Tulloch missed out as did James Hall.
Double European floor champion Whitehouse said: “The whole British men’s section is really strong. Anyone that got selected for the team would have deserved it.
“That’s the thing, when you achieve one of your dreams, you might be crushing someone else’s, which is difficult but it’s just part of the sport.”
Reigning world champion Bryony Page, Izzy Songhurst and Zak Perzamanos make up the trampoline trio.
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