Largest ever Australian gymnastics team named for Paris Olympic Games

Australia will send its largest-ever team of gymnasts to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, naming 13 athletes on Tuesday at the MCG.

The squad features 11 debutants and a record 11 women.

Commonwealth Games all-round and vault champion from the 2022 Games in Birmingham, Georgia Godwin, was unavailable for selection after suffering a ruptured Achilles tendon days out from the Australian National Championships on the Gold Coast in May.

Leading trampoline gymnast Blake Rutherford also saw his dreams dashed when he suffered fractures to his C5 and C6 vertebrae, as well as compression to the disc between C6 and C7 in his neck after a training incident in May. 

Four-time Commonwealth Games medallist Emily Whitehead will contest her second Olympic Games, leading the six-strong artistic gymnast squad.

Tokyo Olympian Lidiia Iakovleva will also compete at her second Games, heading a five-strong team of rhythmic gymnasts.

Russia-born 20-year-old Iakovleva will make history as the first Australian to compete both individually and as part of a group in rhythmic gymnastics.

After competing as Australia’s sole competitor in Tokyo, she is relishing the chance to compete in a team.

“I am so excited to not only compete at my second Olympic Games but to also share this moment with my teammates Emma, Jess, Phoebe and Saskia,” she told the AOC.

“It’s [a] goal we worked very hard towards.”

ABC Sport will be live blogging every day of the Paris Olympics from July 27 (Australian time).

Lidiia Iakovleva has been selected for the rhythmic gymnastics at the Paris Olympic Games.(AAP: James Ross)

Emmanouela Frroku, who will turn 17 just eight days before the rhythmic competition is due to start, will be the youngest Australian to compete in rhythmic gymnastics in 40 years.

Ann Kerr was the youngest when she took to the floor in Los Angeles in 1984.

Brock Batty will become the youngest ever male trampoline gymnast to compete at the Games when he bounds into competition aged 17 years and 211 days.

He surpasses Kazakhstan gymnast Pirmammad Aliyev, who was 18 years and 285 days old in Rio.

“It’s something I’ve honestly thought about every single day since the Olympic dream was born when I started gymnastics,” Batty told the AOC. 

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