| Becky Downie | ||||||||||||||||
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Becky Downie in 2010 |
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| Personal information | ||||||||||||||||
| Full name | Rebecca Lauren Downie | |||||||||||||||
| Country represented | United Kingdom England |
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| Born | January 24, 1992 Nottingham |
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| Height | 156 centimetres (5 ft 1 in) | |||||||||||||||
| Weight | 55 kilograms (120 lb) | |||||||||||||||
| Discipline | Women's artistic gymnastics | |||||||||||||||
| Club | Notts | |||||||||||||||
| Head coach(es) | Claire Starkey | |||||||||||||||
| Assistant coach(es) | Ian Kime | |||||||||||||||
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Medal record
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Rebecca Lauren (Becky) Downie (born 24 January 1992[1]) is a British gymnast from Nottingham, England.[2]
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Downie began training in gymnastics at the age of 7 at Bigwood Gymnastics Club before moving to Notts Gymnastics Club as she continued to succeed. There, coached by Claire Starkey, she has won many junior titles including the British Espoir and Junior National titles.[3] At the 2006 Commonwealth Games, she was the youngest member of the English team[2] that won a silver medal.[4] Downie herself won a bronze medal for her beam routine.[2]
In July 2006, she won the all-around of the Junior British Championships, plus gold medals on the floor and vault and a bronze on bars.[3] As of July 2006, she had won 4 national championships in four straight years at age 14.[5]
Downie turned senior in 2007 and enjoyed a successful year. She was a member of the team who competed at the World Championships in Stuttgart and achieved the best ever result for a British team, finishing sixth in preliminaries and seventh in the team final. This result easily qualified them to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Becky was first reserve for both the vault and bars finals, but did not get to compete in either.
2008 was also successful, Downie competed at the 2008 European Gymnastics Championships in April and helped the British team to a 6th place finish. Becky qualified to both vault and bars finals, but was suffering from the flu on the day they were held. She crashed on one of her vaults, finishing 8th. This was followed with a gutsy but slightly underpar performance on bars, having fallen several times in warmups. A small mistake led her to again finish 8th. However, despite her disappointing result she and Beth Tweddle became the first British women to compete in two individual event finals in the same European championship.
In June 2008, Downie became British Senior National Champion and was selected to compete for Great Britain in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. She finished 12th in the Women's artistic individual all-around, the highest position for a British female gymnast in history.
Downie continued to compete after the 2008 Beijing Olympics, coming 4th at the 2009 American Cup and 2nd on uneven bars at the Glasgow Grand Prix. In 2010 she was part of the silver medal-winning British team at the 2010 European Gymnastics Championships in Birmingham, England. In 2011, after recovering from an injury she was part of the British team who came fifth at the 2011 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Tokyo, Japan helping to qualify a full women's team to the 2012 Summer Olympics. This was the highest placing a British team had achieved at Worlds.