Grand finale of the 2020 GymSTART Challenge Takeover week!

The 2020 GymSTART Challenge Takeover came to a close on Saturday 28th November with a live Q&A & challenge with pommel-horse star Rhys McClenaghan and teammate and World Cup medallist Meg Ryan, after a week of online activities and celebration.

The live session was presented by our resident MC Joanne Murphy and was streamed live on Facebook to a very enthusiastic audience of young gymnasts. The gymnastics stars were virtually joined by two lucky gymnasts aged 8, Naoise Bo Shannon from Douglas Gymnastics and Tadgh Smyth from Phoenix Gymnastics who won the chance to meet their heroes, ask them questions and challenge them to do the most tuck jumps in 30 seconds!

The live show was a success with huge engagement that attracted an audience of circa 4000 people. In case you missed it, watch it once again right here…

There were some sound words of advice from the two high performance gymnasts for our young audience with Rhys advising to always just enjoy gymnastics and saying:

“for that to be the main goal and that to this day even though it’s my full time job it’s still my priority to enjoy gymnastics”.

Meg who is currently juggling gymnastics and studying for her leaving cert said:

“It’s all about being present wherever I am so if I’m in school, making sure that listening and being attentive there and then when I’m in the gym being able to separate it from all my school work and being present in the gym and focus on what I am doing”.

The Gymnastics Ireland Participation Manager and lead of the GymSTART programme Aimi Baker, said:

“What an amazing week of GymSTART fun. It was great to see so many gymnasts taking part and engaging with and enjoying the challenges and activities. And what a way to finish with our live session!! A big thanks to our clubs and gymnasts for taking part and to our GymSTART events team for making this happen. Once again our GymSTART challenge event shows off participation at it best”.

The GymSTART Challenge Takeover is a new Gymnastics Ireland online initiative to celebrate participation in our sport and everything we love about the GymSTART Challenge, since the programme first launched in 2015 until now. All our members gymnasts were welcome to take part regardless of age, ability and standard. Challenges that were set by our coach Colm O’Toole could be adapted in any way to suit the gymnasts’ ability. The activities included an opening warm up and daily challenges where participants had the chance to win a daily prize by sharing their videos, picture and memories of past events and using #GymSTART.

Congratulations to all the prize winners of the daily challenges. The lucky prize winners were:

• Lauren Doherty from Finesse Gymnastics Club
• Jessica Loughrey from Arklow Gymnastics Club
• Oisin Duggan from Carrigaline Gymnastics Club
• Melani Bell from YouRitMix Gymnastics Club
• Ashling Bahon from Midlands Artistic Gymnastics Club
• Cate Byrne from Athy Gymnastics Club

The online event was held over the week when the two popular GymSTART Challenge events were due to happen in the National Indoor Arena and University of Limerick where over 1,600 gymnasts were expected to take part. These events were cancelled due to Covid restrictions.

Thanks to Quatro Gymnastics for sponsoring the daily challenges prizes for the 2020 GymSTART Challenge Takeover. Re-live all the moments of this online event on our Facebook page.

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