Silver lining for Young as she holds nerve at the British Championships

Annie Young won a silver medal at the British Gymnastics Championships held at the Echo Arena in Liverpool at the weekend.

The Norfolk Academy of Gymnastics member, 13, is in her first year as a junior gymnast, handled the big stage superbly in the all around competition.

Annie started her competition on floor exercise where she performed her new routine beautifully for 12.6, and she followed this up with a powerful, well controlled vault where she scored 13.45.

Annie was amongst the top contenders at the half-way point of the event, but knew that she had the more demanding pieces still to come.

She hit her highly complex bar routine really well for 12.45, the highest score on that piece on the day, and she held her nerve well on the beam to score 12.6 and give her a career best overall total of 51.1.

This saw Annie take the overall silver medal behind the second-year junior Amelie Morgan from the Academy of Gymnastics in Portishead, amongst a field of 52 of the best gymnasts in the country.

This result puts Annie in a strong position as she vies for selection to the GB team at the Junior European Championships to be held in Glasgow in August.

There was more success for Norfolk Academy Gymnastics members Lily Tranfield and Emma Atkin, both 12, as they also made their debuts at the Liverpool event, taking part in the Espoir competition where Lily qualified for the final on vault, and placed sixth.

In her second trip to Liverpool, senior Laura Cooke, also had a personal best result of 22nd in a field of world championship veterans and Olympic medalists.

Norfolk Academy head coach Sara-Jane Inglis was delighted with the results.

'This was a fantastic event where these hard working and highly dedicated athletes get acknowledged as the stars that they really are,' she said. 'It is fantastic to see the club, in its 10th anniversary year, and the county as a whole represented in such depth on this stage. Annie's result should give her great confidence for the future and she is certainly one of the rising stars of the sport. We will be working on some improvements and potential upgrades as the selection process for the Europeans continues.'