Aussie champ Heath Thorpe left off 2023 World Championships team - Gymnastics weekly news
Plus, 2019 Pan Am Games gold medallist Tomas Gonzalez comes out as gay and a look back at Team France on the uneven bars at Athens 2004
Artistic Gymnastics
Australian gymnastics national champion Heath Thorpe was not named to the nation’s men’s squad for September’s World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Antwerp, Belgium.
Instead, Gymnastics Australia announced on Wednesday (19 July) that Tyson Bull, James Hardy, Clay Mason Stephens, Mitchell Morgans, and Vedant Sawant will represent the Oceania champions at the global event, which serves as the sport’s biggest qualifier for the Paris 2024.
Thorpe, who won his first national title in May, took to Twitter, sharing his disappointment at missing the Worlds.
“I am absolutely heartbroken to share that I have not been selected to the Australian team for the 2023 World Championships,” he wrote. “It is an impossible task to summarise the overwhelming emotions that I am currently experiencing… but know I will have more words to share soon with my friends, family and fans.”
Thorpe would still have several avenues for Olympic qualification including the 2024 International Gymnastics Federation apparatus World Cup series and the Oceanic Championships.
2019 Pan Am Games gold medallist comes out as gay in new autobiography
Three-time Olympian Tomas Gonzalez of Chile has come out as gay in his recently released autobiography.
“I guess it’s not a topic anymore, but yes, I’m gay,” Gonzalez said, according to El Desconcierto. “If it’s about making it public, I prefer to do it in this book.”
The 2019 Pan American Games floor exercise champion says that he began to realize he was gay at age 24.
“I cried a lot those days,” he recalls. “I was in the process of coming to terms with myself as a homosexual and I felt that a part of me was dying, too.”
The book, titled Campeon: Lecciones, Triunfos y Caidas de un Gimnasta Olympico (Champion: Lessons, Triumphs and Falls of an Olympic Gymnast) also looks at hardships faced during his time as an athlete, including a period in which he struggled with an abusive coach.
“After London [2012 Olympic Games], I said, ‘I can’t take it anymore, it’s doing me harm, I’ve gotten this far with him, but I’m not enjoying gymnastics or my accomplishments,” he writes in the book.
From the vault…
This week, we take a look back at Team France on the uneven bars at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. The squad, which finished sixth overall, was led by Emilie Lepennec’s 9.662 on the event. Lepennec went on to capture the gold medal in the uneven bars final.