Becky Downie is in the midst of describing every thought and every feeling she has during her absurd uneven bar routine, one of the most difficult in the world, when she pauses for a second and sighs: “It blows my mind every day once I’ve done a bar routine, what I do, because you do so much in such a short space of time.”
Downie is speaking as the British team make their final preparations for the Gymnastics World Championships in Stuttgart which begin on Friday. The 27-year-old has spent much of the morning in Lilleshall, the home of British Gymnastics, constantly repeating the hardest part of the routine – three connected skills so blindingly fast that even her rivals stop to watch. In only a couple of seconds, Downie circles the top bar and leaps into the air, half-twisting as she catches the bar backwards. As the swing propels her backwards, she twists again as she throws herself down to the bottom bar before immediately flying back to the top.
The connection was invented by Beth Tweddle, Britain’s greatest female gymnast, and it is widely considered one of the most difficult in the world. Downie believes it can drive her to secure the world or Olympic uneven bar medal she has been chasing for 12 years.
For many other gymnasts, just the first skill alone, the Tweddle, is impossible. When I ask Ellie Downie, Becky’s sister and the 2017 European all around champion, if she has ever tried the Tweddle, she laughs in my face: “We debated trying that but I can barely hang in that grip because I’m just too stiff.” Alice Kinsella, who won the European title on beam this year, simply closes her eyes and shakes her head: “I’ve never tried it. People say: ‘Will I try it?’ But I just don’t think it’s for me. Like, no. I think I’ll stick with the normal one.”
Downie’s abnormal skill selection complements a career that has been far from regular. For a while, it seemed like it would be defined by her bitter 2012, where after being Britain’s second-in-command behind Tweddle for five years, the first major team she did not make was for her home Olympics. Downie was distraught, but in hindsight the snub lit a fire within. “That was heartbreaking because I had never not made a team in my career until that point,” she says. “That was really hard to take. But, for me, after that it was like: ‘OK how do I stop that from happening again? You have to be so good that they can’t not put you on a team.’”
For seven years, Downie has been that good. After being known for much of her career as a supreme talent who struggled to maintain her composure with major medals on the line, her moment of reckoning came when she won the European championships on uneven bars in 2014, beating the Olympic champion Aliya Mustafina before retaining her title in 2016. When Great Britain confirmed their rise to the upper echelons of the sport by winning team bronze at the 2015 world championships, Downie was the leader and the team’s rock.
Downie arrived at the 2016 Rio Olympics in the form of her life and with a great chance of finally winning her first medal. Instead, another Olympics left her heartbroken. Her routine in the preliminary rounds was excellent except for one freak error – her toe brushed the top bar, incurring one huge deduction. Without the deduction, she would have outscored the eventual bronze medalist. Instead, she left Brazil wondering if she had the strength to carry on.
“After Rio, I was heavily debating retiring. When I had time to process it all and look back [I realised] it wasn’t because I wasn’t good enough.
“For me, the most frustrating thing was that I beat the Olympic champion, Aliya Mustafina, eight weeks before at the European championships. So, it was there, the routine was there – I had to process that and think: ‘You were good enough.’”
Downie’s latest battle has been the toughest injury of her career. After years of considering surgery to fix the fraying ligaments in her left elbow, she fell badly at the 2017 European championships and the ligaments snapped. When the doctors informed her that her elbow would have to undergo full reconstructive surgery, she wept: “There was a point where I was like: ‘I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to do this again. If my elbow is not fully fixed, uneven bars is my piece so it’s game over.’ After initially being upset, I had to believe that it was going to get better. I was so over the top with my rehab! Every single hour I was icing it … I went into the gym within a couple of days after and was getting every other body part as strong as it could be so when I came back I could comeback well and quickly.”
In order to return to gymnastics, Downie had to learn basic aspects of the sport anew. There was a time when just gripping the bar marked supreme progress. Her left side has always dominated her gymnastics, but her wonky left elbow meant that her comeback rested on learning how to twist to the right for the first time in her life.
Now she has made it back, 2019 seems like a full-circle moment. In 2007, she made her world championship debut in Stuttgart, when the British team qualified for the Beijing Olympics and their era of success began. She returns as a seasoned veteran with a wealth of experience and a team no longer content with making up the numbers. She is desperate to draw from both failures and successes as she resumes her chase for the elusive medal.
“It has been a mad process getting the bar routine together and how it’s all come about, but I’m excited to give it a go. It has been a process, it has been a journey, but it has been awesome.”
