Gymnastics: Weddle raises the bar

Park Road, which runs parallel with the River Mersey from Toxteth towards Dingle, is not one of Liverpool's more salubrious thoroughfares. There is no evidence of the city's status as European Capital of Culture 2008 in the derelict buildings, the youth centre protected by barbed wire, the DIY shop shuttered up at midday on a Tuesday. And yet this bleak urban scene is the backdrop to a training regime that might yet yield an Olympic gold medal: the petite young woman with the dark hair and the brace on her teeth who parks her car outside the Lifestyles Fitness Centre in Park Road every day but Sunday is Beth Tweddle, a world champion two years ago on the asymmetric bars, and the finest gymnast Britain has ever produced.

Inside the building, I watch Tweddle going through her daily routine, under the critical but affectionate gaze of Amanda Kirby, the woman who has coached her since she was a slip of a thing, aged 10. She is also watched by a gang of primary schoolkids. At least, they would be primary schoolkids if they hadn't all been excluded from school. They come to the Lifestyles gym every week, sent by pupil referral units, for trampolining practice. It is supervised by a no-nonsense guy called Jay, who has also set up his trampoline in local prisons (not too close to the perimeter wall, one hopes) and understands how strenuous exercise can burn off energy that might otherwise be anti-socially deployed.

I don't know how many other nations would have one of their main Olympic medal contenders training alongside a bunch of kids suspended from school, but the arrangement is mutually beneficial. For Tweddle the constant high-pitched chatter is the kind of external distraction she must learn to shut out. It is not the only distraction in the gym, either. On a local radio station, broadcast loudly and continually over the loudspeaker system, another local hero, John Lennon, is singing Woman. "And woman, I will try to express/ My inner feelings and thankfulness/ For showing me the meaning of success." The lyrics could hardly be more apt. For the kids, here is a shining example of utter commitment, not to mention world-class talent.

Anyway, unbeknown either to them or me, we are in for a treat today. Tweddle and Kirby have decided the time has come to unveil her Olympic bars routine from start to finish for the first time, which she does in a blur of astounding flexibility and vigour. When she dismounts, a nine-year-old scallywag with a blond crew-cut shouts out, "Hey Beth, that was boss!" Kirby is similarly impressed. "That was really good," she says. Tweddle knows it, and is beaming.

The routine contains the trickiest move she has ever done on the bars, a Toe-on Tkatchev to which she and Kirby have added a half-turn. Later, for the benefit of those not familiar with the jargon of gymnastics, I invite Tweddle to explain it in simple terms. "Erm, I go from a handstand position, with my feet on the bar, then I circle round, take my feet off, let go with the hands, go backwards over the bar, straddle the bar..." She trails off, dissolving into giggles. She's never had to explain it quite like this before, and I venture that it's a bit like explaining how to tie shoelaces; easier to demonstrate than to articulate. "Yeah," she says. "Anyway, I'm always catching blind because of the half-turn."

If the judges in Beijing are even half as impressed as the blond scally and me, her medal prospects look good. Whatever, there are hopes that the Toe-on Tkatchev with half-turn, as pioneered in Liverpool 8, will become known as the Tweddle. It is the perfect name for a gymnast. We must all be thankful that she wasn't born Shufflebottom.

She was, however, born on April 1, 1985, which makes her rather superannuated for a gymnast. On the other hand, it is striking for those of us of a certain age that she, something of a veteran in her sport, must consider the era of Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci to be positively sepia-tinted. I ask what she knows of those two, who so illuminated the Olympics of 1972 and 1976?

"Obviously I've seen videos," she says. "And I know that they totally changed gymnastics. Before them it was more like dance. But gymnastics these days is a totally different sport compared with what it was like then. If you look at the skills even of eight- and nine-year-olds, they're doing the same things that Olga was doing towards the end of her career. When she first did a tuck-back, a single back somersault, everyone was like 'oh my god'. Now you get really young kids doing tuck-backs with a full turn."

FACTFILE

ELIZABETH TWEDDLE: Born 1 April, 1985, Johannesburg.

HOME SUCCESS: Won bronze on uneven bars in the 2002 World Championship before taking gold on uneven bars and all-round event at Commonwealth Games. 2003 bronze on the uneven bars made her first British gymnast to medal at Worlds. Won gold on the bars at the 2006 European Championship before becoming Britain's first-ever World Champion by winning the uneven bars event at the Worlds.

BEIJING EVENTS: Uneven bars; women's team event

To stay ahead of the ever-burgeoning competition at the ripe old age of 23, Tweddle practises for up to seven hours a day in the Lifestyles gym. On days like this, she is there from 9.30am to lunchtime, and again from 4.30pm to 8.30pm. It is a gruelling schedule, although she says that Kirby – an Olympic gymnast herself in 1984 – is good at monitoring her levels not only of tiredness but also boredom. It was her coach, too, who, after Tweddle had graduated from Liverpool's John Moores University last year with a degree in sports science, insisted that she find something else to occupy her mind in the run-up to the Olympics. So she went back to college to pursue a sports massage course. When she does finally hang up her leotard, jobs should not be hard to come by.

She will need to work; being one of the world's best gymnasts is not a massively lucrative business, and she depends entirely on Lottery funding. "It was cut after Athens [where by her standards Tweddle performed poorly, finishing 19th overall] but after 2005 when I got to third in the world they put it back up. I use my Lottery [money] to help with training, and my car, and when I go abroad all my trips are paid for, but basically if I did gymnastics for money I would have quit ages ago. Luckily my parents gave me good advice when I started earning prize money. They told me to save it, which I've been doing since I was 15. That's what I used as the deposit to buy my house, and I've got ISAs and bonds and stuff." I ask her what is the biggest prize cheque she has ever won? "I'd rather not say. But it's not in the same league as athletics."

Tweddle reckons she has another year or so of earning power as a gymnast. She will probably compete in London in next year's world championships, then call it a day. "I did always think that I would go in 2006, but I'm still at the top and at the moment I don't see much point in giving up something I love. The 2012 Olympics would be too much of a stretch, though hopefully I'll be involved with the media or mentoring young athletes. I do that already through a scheme sponsored by Visa; there are eight hopefuls and eight apprentices, and I'm one of the hopefuls, mentoring an apprentice, Gaby, who's a badminton player. But I'm mentored myself by Tanni Grey-Thompson, who has advised me to retire only when I'm absolutely sure, not just because I've had a hard season. I love Tanni. I talk to her a lot, and I have a right laugh with her. I went with her to see the Spice Girls in January, and one of my best friends came too. She couldn't believe how brilliant Tanni was. She's so down to earth."

So, for that matter, is Tweddle. Although born in Johannesburg, where her father was working for ICI, she spent most of her childhood in the Cheshire village of Bunbury, near Crewe, and she appears to possess the best northern virtues: warmth and openness.

Nor was her head turned in October 2006, when she won on the bars in the world championships and promptly became the first gymnast to be shortlisted in the BBC Sports Personality of the Year competition. In the event, she finished third behind Zara Phillips and Darren Clarke, which she still rates as one of the greatest thrills of her career. "I was totally shocked, but it was great for gymnastics, and it showed that the public recognised how much work I'd put in. I'd already done a routine on the bars that night, which is the most nerve-racking thing I've ever done, even more than my world routine. At first my coach said no, she didn't want me injuring myself, but eventually she agreed to it. And I was so nervous. If I'd got it wrong, I would have ended up on Alan Shearer's lap." Which might not have been a bad thing for a football-mad woman, except that Tweddle is a Liverpool fan.

She was always likely to develop an interest in sport. "Both my parents were dead keen on hockey, both of them played every weekend, and I grew up with a hockey stick in my hand. My brother took to it but I didn't. It was too cold. So I tried ballet, but I didn't like the frilly tutus. I tried horse-riding, but that didn't last long. I was quite into swimming for a bit, but by then I'd started gymnastics and I had to choose between them. It was always going to be gymnastics. From the time I was little I was always upside down on sofas, hanging from banisters, climbing trees with my brother. I was never into dolls."

Her strengths as a gymnast were perhaps cemented in those childhood years: she loves the bar and the floor exercises, but is less certain on the beam and the vault, which she intends to give up for good after the Olympics. Speaking of which, who does Tweddle think will be her main rivals in Beijing? "Definitely the Chinese," she says. "They've got kids coming out of the woodwork, names we've not even heard of, but have performed really well in the past few grand prixs. And there's also [the American] Nastia Liukin, who's been my main rival for the past couple of years."

If Tweddle does prevail, she can expect the glow of celebrity to be considerably warmer when she comes home. At the moment she likes it the way it is, and was gratified rather than offended when she met her current boyfriend and he didn't have a clue who she was. "He only knew when his mates told him," she recalls, laughing. "He said to me, 'is this true?' But he's been really good. He understands if he doesn't see me for two weeks or whatever. He works nine to five and lives in north Wales, and I train in the evenings, so it's not ideal." Still, at least he knows that she's not hanging out in bars. Just flipping over them.

Beth Tweddle is an ambassador for Team Visa and guest editor on www.VisaURLife.co.uk/bethtweddle – a brand new concept created to take the strain out of internet searching and bring consumers the very best of everything the web has to offer, in one place, at one time. Other guest editors have included Cat Deeley, Dylan Jones and Tom Aikens.

LET'S TWIST AGAIN: THREE GREAT FEMALE GYMNASTS

Nadia Comaneci

The Romanian shot to prominence aged 14 at the 1976 Montreal Games. Her score of 10.0 on the uneven bars was the first time in Olympic history the score had been achieved. She repeated this feat six times, winning golds in the all-around, bars and beam. Retained her beam title in Moscow in 1980.

Svetlana Khorkina

One of the most decorated female gymnasts of all time, winning 20 World Championship medals and 7 Olympic titles. Gold in the all-around event at the age of 24 made her the second oldest female world champion. Won successive golds on the uneven bars at 1996 and 2000 Games, as well as five World titles in the same event.

Olga Korbut

Emotive displays in the 1972 and 1976 games brought the sport into the mainstream. Won golds for beam and floor routines and silver in the uneven parallel bars. Took gold in the team event in Montreal in 1976 as well as an individual silver on the balance beam.