Tweddle eyes one last glory chance

BETH Tweddle will look to bow out on a high in what his likely to be her last Olympic Games in Beijing.

The former Crewe and Nantwich gymnast, Britain's most successful gymnast, has indicated she intends to quit the sport after the World Championships in London next year and nothing would give her a greater feeling of achievement than an Olympic gold medal.

Injuries have hampered the career of the South Africa-born 23-year-old – most recently a rib injury which will limit her participation in Beijing to the team event, individual bars and individual floor – and she has vowed to go out at the top and return to university to embark on a second career in physiotherapy.

Tweddle claimed Britain's first gold medal at the World Championships in Denmark in 2006 and followed that up by becoming the first Briton to win gold at the European Championships the same year.

A serious ankle injury ended any hopes she had at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in 2006, but she takes inspiration from the way the likes of Kelly Holmes and Sally Gunnell have recovered from serious injury to go on and be successful in their chosen sport.

Despite the setback in Australia, Tweddle came third in the BBC Sports Personality of the Year voting in 2006 and after that pointed to the spirit and hard work shown by Holmes and Gunnell among others to get back to the top of their game, which she did by becoming world champion.

She said: "I remember watching the 1992 Olympics with Sally Gunnell, Colin Jackson and Linford Christie and more recently Kelly Holmes and Paula Radcliffe.

"I've seen the injuries those sort of top people have gone through and how they have coped, come back and been successful.

"I've had a lot of injuries myself, but just knowing they have managed to fight back has been inspirational. It left me thinking 'if they can do it, so can I'.

"Did I ever think of quitting? There have been a few times. The Commonwealth Games was the hardest injury I've come back from, just because it was so painful.

"I knew I could have done well and I was ready to pack it all in – but by the next morning those thoughts had gone, I had got my head sorted out and I supported the team."

But no matter what happens in Beijing, Tweddle is ready to cut down her training and turn her back on the sport next year to move on to another chapter in her life.

She said: "We've got the Olympics and then the World Championships in London in 2009.

"After the Olympics I would probably cut my training down. I could specialise in certain disciplines, such as bars or floor for the World Championships, so I wouldn't have to train as vigorously."

Tweddle was born in Johannesburg and moved back to the UK when she was 18 months old.

At the age of seven, she made the first steps into a career of gymnastics at her local club, Crewe and Nantwich, before moving on to the City of Liverpool Gymnastics Club.

Her first performance on the world stage came at the World Championships in 2001 where she finished 24th in the all-round competition.

But it was the following year where she really made her breakthrough when taking a bronze medal on the uneven bars at the European Championships in Greece. That was the first medal by a Briton at the European Championships and in 2002 she finished fourth in the same discipline on the world stage.

The 17-year-old Tweddle had an impressive Commonwealth Games campaign in Manchester, taking gold medals in the all-round event and uneven bars and added a silver medal to that haul when England finished second in the team event.

She then won bronze on the uneven bars at the World Championships the following year before winning silver at the European Championships in 2004 and making her first appearance in the Olympics, although she suffered disappointment in Athens when she fell twice from the beam and missed out on a place in the final of the uneven bars.

But it was in 2005 that she started to suffer from injuries and she had to pull out of the European Championships and the Commonwealth Games the following year.

Tweddle overcame the disappointment of missing out in Melbourne later that year by becoming Britain's first world champion.

She won on the uneven bars event with a score of 16.200 in Denmark, beating the USA's reigning champion Nastia Liukin into second place.

She took the World Cup title on bars to finish 2006 as the World, European and World Cup champion on the uneven bars.

However, she failed to defend her world title in 2007 in Germany as she finished fourth and she will be determined to return home from China with gold as she comes towards the end of a very impressive career.