Young gymnast rises to the occasion

New Zealand did not field a team in the women’s artistic gymnastics competition, but 15-year-old Stella Ashcroft performed exceedingly well as an individual.

Ashcroft is new to the senior ranks, but handled the pressure well.

Competing in the first sub-division in the morning, she placed ninth of 13 in the vault (with a total of 12.325), 19^th of 30 in the uneven bars (10.000), second of 23 on the beam (11.750) and 11^th of 21 in the floor exercises (10.875).

She finished seventh in her sub-division in the all-around competition with 45.725 points. Scotland’s Shannon Archer was the top all-round performer in Ashcroft-s sub-division with a total of 48.350.

There were four sub-divisions today and Ashcroft had the nerve-jangling prospect of watching dozens of other gymnasts compete, all hoping to push her down the rankings. The top 18 performers overall were to move forward to tomorrow evening’s all-around finals and the top eight in each category were to qualify for tomorrow’s individual apparatus finals.

By the time the fourth and final sub-division began, Ashcroft was assured of making the all-around finals and still somewhat hopeful of making the beam final.

As it turned out she finished 14^th in the all-around section, so made the final relatively comfortably, and was 10^th in the beam, so was listed as second reserve.

Her coach, Terry Walker, was absolutely delighted with how Ashcroft had handled herself.

“She is very calm and composed, but even so to move into the senior ranks and immediately be in the Commonwealth Games is a daunting prospect.

“She had a really great day. The beam is one of her best disciplines and she was very good today. However, she never let herself down anywhere, and she should be very proud.”