WHEN Amy Tinkler talks about the technical details of the vault that secured her the national title earlier this year, the vocabulary and the tone of her voice change.
She is no longer the impressionable teenager, she is the mature athlete. “You’ve got to focus on the round-off, the flick, the block for the flick, then the twisting technique and the landing,” she explains. “It’s a very difficult vault.”
Delightfully, Tinkler, the latest star of the increasingly powerful British women’s gymnastics squad, is entirely unaware that the vault, the Double Twist Yurchenko, is named after Natalia Yurchenko, the Russian gymnast who first completed it more than 30 years ago. Several twists, springs and somersaults have been added to the original since then, but few British gymnasts have controlled the complex blur of movement as well as Tinkler, let alone at the age of 15.
Switch back briefly to the runway at Liverpool’s Echo Arena and the moment of truth for Tinkler, who knows that with just one solid vault she will become national all-around champion. In the crowd are her parents, Nora and Michael, her coaches and friends, all aware that triumph or collapse lie just a few seconds away.
It seems almost cruel to heap such pressure on one so young. But Tinkler has it all worked out.
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“I knew that I was ahead and I knew that if I landed a good vault I would win the title,” she says. “But I didn’t want to think too much about that, so I focused on my routine. Whatever happened after that, happened. If you think about it too much, it won’t go right. I’m quite good at blocking things out.”
Tinkler duly landed the vault cleanly and the handsome trophy, with the names of all the past champions, takes pride of place on the mantelpiece in the living-room of the family home in Durham.
“Generally, Amy has it all figured out,” says her long-time coach, Rachael Wright. “She was never at the top at the age of eight or nine, she was never the most flexible or anything, but she just had that edge. When I watch her, I’m confident because she’s confident.”
Tinkler will need every ounce of that self-belief this week when the world championships begin in Glasgow.
For the first time, she will be competing alongside world and Olympic champions and, with Olympic qualification at stake for the GB team, the responsibility could not be greater.
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But as the team put the finishing touches to their routines at their training base in Lilleshall last week, no trace of nerves crossed the face of the youngest member of the squad.
“I can’t afford to think about who’s there,” she says. “I might walk past Simone Biles [the world champion] or Gabby Douglas [the Olympic champion] and think, ‘Wow, they’re the champions’, but I have to stay focused on what I have to do.
“A lot of people who know me would say that I am quite shy. But having a big audience just fires me up and because I love competing so much, I find it easier to go out there, do my job and perform.”
It has always been that way, ever since the day Tinkler first tottered into a gym at the age of two. “My Mum was a gymnastics coach so I just went along,” she says. By the age of five, she was in the elite squad at the South Durham Gym Club, at seven she was competing in her first novice event and, a year later, she came second in the national age finals and was selected for her first GB squad. “I suppose that was the first time that I actually thought: ‘Wow, I’m quite good at this’,” says Tinkler. “The first time I really started watching gymnastics was the 2008 Olympics. Beth Tweddle [the Olympic bronze medallist and multiple world champion] is a big inspiration. She’s an incredible person to look up to. We’re very close as a squad. I’m an only child and the girls here are like my second family. We push each other on and give each other confidence. If someone messes up, we have to pick them up ready for the next piece.”
During the week, Tinkler trains at Lilleshall, and at weekends she returns home to the northeast. If, like a fortnight ago, there is a competition abroad, life becomes even more complicated. Somewhere in the middle of it all, she has to find time for her GCSE studies at Durham High School.
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The week in Glasgow will be another learning experience. “She’s had all the preparation and mentally she’ll be fine,” says Wright.
On the day of the women’s team final, Tinkler will turn 16, but she already has the head of a veteran. “As a kid when the others were getting terrified, she was just excited about competing,” adds Wright. “It will be the same at the worlds. She has no nerves.”