Beth Tweddle

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Elizabeth "Beth" Kimberly Tweddle, born April 1, 1985, Johannesburg, South Africa is a British gymnast. Tweddle is the current European Champion on the uneven bars^{[citation needed]}. Tweddle is currently Britain's most successful gymnast^{[citation needed]}.

Medal record
Competitor for United Kingdom
Gymnastics
World Championships
Gold	2006 Aarhus	Uneven Bars
Bronze	2003 Anaheim	Uneven Bars
Bronze	2005 Melbourne	Uneven Bars
European Championships
Gold	2006 Volos	Uneven Bars
Silver	2004 Amsterdam	Uneven Bars
Silver	2007 Amsterdam	Floor
Silver	2008 Clermont-Ferrand	Floor
Bronze	2002 Patras	Uneven Bars

1 Background
2 A pattern of near successes
3 World Champion
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Background

Tweddle currently resides in Bunbury, Cheshire, England. Tweddle began gymnastics at the age of seven, at the City of Liverpool Gymnastics Club. Tweddle's first major victory was at the 2001 British National Championships^{[citation needed]}. Tweddle was also a memebr of the Liverpool club team that won the British Team Championships four consecutive times, between 2002 and 2005^{[citation needed]}.

Tweddle first international competition was the 2001 World Artistic Gymnastic Championships (World Championships), placing 24th in the all-round competition^{[citation needed]}. Tweddle's perfomance improved in 2002, winning a bronze medal on the uneven bars at the 2002 European Artistic Gymnastic Championships (European Championships) in Patras, Greece. The medal was the first for a British gymnast at a Europpean Championship^{[citation needed]}. At the 2002 World Championships, Tweddle finished fourth on the uneven bars. Tweddle also participated at the 2002 Commonwealth Games, winning the all-round event and the uneven bars and finishing second in the team event^{[citation needed]}. In 2003 tweddle competed at the the World Championships winning a bronze on the uneven bars^{[citation needed]}.

In 2004, Tweedle competed at the European Championships, finishing second in the uneven bars and fifth in the team competition. Tweddle was selected to compete as part of the British team at the Athens Olympics^{[citation needed]}. Tweddle finished eleventh in the team competition and nineteenth in the all-around competition^{[citation needed]}. At the 2004 world cup finals in Birmingham, Tweddle finished second on the uneven bars and fifth on the floor^{[citation needed]}.

During the 2005 season, Tweddle withdrew from the European Championships through injury, after qualifiying in the top eight for all events^{[citation needed]}. At the World Championships, Tweddle finished fourth in the floor and third in uneven bars. Due to injury sustained during the uneven bars, Twedle withdrew from floor competition^{[citation needed]}.

In 2006, Tweddle was unable to compete at the Commonwealth Games due to injury. Tweddle competed in the European Championships, where she finished first in the uneven bars. The victory was the first at the European Championships for a British gymnast^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] A pattern of near successes

Tweddle is known not only for her accomplishments on bars, but also for competitive misfortunes. At the 2005 Europeans, she qualified in second place to the all-around and had the potential to win a medal in all four event finals, but she injured herself during the AA competition and had to withdraw. At the 2005 World Championships, she injured her knee immediately before the bars finals. While she competed in the event and won a medal, she had to withdraw from the floor competition the next day. Tweddle was also forced to withdraw from the 2006 Commonwealth Games when she suffered an ankle injury in training. With good performances, several medals were possible and she would have been the clear favourite for golds on bars, floor and in the all-around. Understandably therefore, Beth was disappointed. However, later in 2006 her luck was to change spectacularly.

[edit] World Champion

In October, 2006, Tweddle became Britain's first ever gymnastics World Champion by winning the uneven bars event with a score of 16.200 in the 2006 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Aarhus, Denmark [1]. In doing so, she beat reigning champion Nastia Liukin of the USA into second place. Tweddle's title was a historic achievement for a Briton: Neil Thomas took two silvers on floor in the 1990s, but nobody else had ever come close. The performance was all the more remarkable because Tweddle had previously been less than perfect on bars in the competition: she had only qualified in fifth place and had fallen in the all-around, where a clean routine would probably have helped her to a medal. Nonetheless, she was able to perform her very difficult routine cleanly and the reward was the highest score of the entire championship. Tweddle also performed cleanly in floor finals to finish fifth, and was less than half a tenth away from bronze.

As a result of this success, Beth came third in the prestigious 2006 BBC Sports Personality of the Year [2] which was decided by a public vote. She was the first ever British gymnast to even make the shortlist, though Nadia Comaneci and Olga Korbut have both won in the foreign athletes' category.

The week after her BBC success, Tweddle competed in her final competition of the year, the World Cup Finals. Here, she took the bars title once again, narrowly beating the exciting Chinese athlete Li Ya. Tweddle's routine was less difficult, but better form scores gave her the gold. This was followed by a silver on floor, her first major medal on that apparatus. She finished 2006 as World, European and World Cup champion on the bars.

Tweddle failed to retain her World Championship title in Stuttgart on September 8, 2007, when she finished fourth.

She hopes to continue at least until the 2008 Olympics, where she will make her second try for Olympic success, and perhaps until the 2009 World Championships in London.

She currently divides her time between her training and her studies at Liverpool John Moores University, where she is in her final year. Eventually, Tweddle would like to be a physiotherapist.