Natalie proves shes good as goldHead (From Penarth Times)

Natalie proves shes good as goldHead

GOLDEN girl Natalie Gill from Penarth Gym Club scored a runaway victory at the Welsh National Challenge Cup Championships on Saturday for girls aged nine years.

She mounted the rostrum four times to receive four gold medals.

The first was for being supreme overall champion.

Gymnastics is a sport where titles are often won by one hundredth of a mark, but little Natalie was 1.68 ahead of second placed Abbie Stone from Cardiff's Phoenix Club and 2.05 higher than bronze medal winning Jasmine Raymond from Haverfordwest.

None who witnessed the mature elegance and perfection of performance of this little miss were surprised to see her also take individual apparatus golds on floor, beam and asymmetric bars.

Despite her youth she has already represented Wales in a British Team Final in which they were runners up.

Penarth Gym Club has a truly golden girl with a great future.

Later the same day competitors in the 10 and 11 years age category included Tamara Jones, Francesca Urbano, Aimee Smith and Bethan Yapp.

All apart from Tammy suffered from the dreaded beam wobble and lost their chance to qualify for awards.

More hard work will be necessary to rise higher in the ratings but they are a determined team and just know that they can do it.

Sunday saw the staging of the Ladies event but a school pole vaulting injury together with a poor vault landing reduced the Penarth senior contingent from five to three members.

This left no margin for error as it meant that all three scores on each of the four apparatus had to count instead of a team's highest three.

Undaunted and determined to enjoy the event, Sarah Sherlock, Sophie Erikson and for her first year in the senior ranks Emily Woolley gave it their all and eventually took third place.

Sarah and Emily had tied scored on beam, both missing an individual medal by 0.1.

Sophie and Sarah, who had functioned on a reduced training programme this year due to GCSE and A Level exams, more than pleased their coaches with their performance and all agreed that young Emily saved the day.