Alice Kinsella’s dream has been 13 long years in the making at Park Wrekin

For the Telford-based club and experienced head coach Christine Still, a BBC Olympic commentator, it has been a long time coming – almost three decades.

Kinsella, 20, a member of the successful Telford club since she was seven, is ready to lead the women’s gymnastics team as captain in Tokyo when qualification action begins in the early hours of Sunday morning. It is the balance beam European and Commonwealth champion’s debut Olympics and backs up the promise Still and others saw in her as a nine-year-old British age champion.

For coach Still and the club it will be a fourth Olympian but first since Sarah Mercer competed in Barcelona in 1992 and before her Shropshire’s Lisa Young and Amanda Reddin, in Los Angeles in 1984.

“She was seven when she came to our gym and we’ve seen her grow all the way through,” said Still, who is commentating on a sixth Games for the BBC, but this time from headquarters in Salford, rather than out in the Far East, due to the pandemic. “She’s always had that determination, courage and ability to push herself.

“Alice always shown she had that potential. We have a British age group Championships, the earliest you can compete is age nine and she won the Championships as a nine-year-old. She showed her pedigree early on.” Essex-born and Birmingham-based Kinsella was European Champion and top-ranking performer for GB in Poland two years ago. She came through this year’s trials ranked second and was named captain of the four-women squad. She will compete across all disciplines over the next week-and-a-half, progression dependant.

It says much about the British women’s team that Kinsella, at 20, is the ‘experienced’ captain. Her team-mates are 16-year-old twins Jennifer Gadirova and Jessica Gadirova, and Amelie Morgan, 18.

It has been as tough a Games as any to achieve qualification. Still reveals the difficulties of having to ensure Kinsella was physically and mentally ready again to qualify this year after the disappointment of last year’s postponement. And for Alice, daughter of former Villa and ALbion footballer Mark and sister of Walsall player Liam, qualification is just reward for tireless work throughout last year, following the initial lockdown, at the club’s elite full-time gym facility at the school in Wellington.

Still added: “Gymnasts like Alice prepared fully for last year and it was quite a challenge for her and us as coaches to keep her on the ball and bring her back to that situation again.

“I think there are some gymnasts and athletes that probably haven’t been able to achieve that a year on.

“But Alice worked very diligently through lockdown. Our head of elite coaching Brett Ince who coaches Alice with me did every single day on Zoom sessions between an hour and 90 minutes in lockdown on body conditioning.

“She actually came back into the gym in quite reasonable shape. Alice had elite athlete exemption, so she had the initial three month lockdown but then came back, we opened the gym just for her and she could train at Lilleshall as well.

“It’s been a lot of dedication on her part, but on everyone else’s as well.”

Park Wrekin Club last week saw Kinsella off to Japan with a celebration of her achievement. For Still, the date was fitting.

She added: “The little celebration we did to send Alice off on her way was exactly four years to the day, in 2017, that we moved into our new full-time premises, the old Charlton School site, that has made a big difference for us. We thank Telford & Wrekin Council very much for that chance. It meant Alice had been able to train properly, fully and really prepare well.

“Until then we were working in half a sports hall at Wrekin College, which was great but very different to our own fitted gym facility.”

Still believes the young GB team will be ‘sniping at the heels’ of big-hitters USA, China and Russia. She said of Kinsella’s chances: “Balance beam always been the piece she’s done well on, but in order to go the Olympics everybody has to be working all apparatus well.

“We’ve focused this last year on making sure her other pieces are just as strong, that really has been key for her winning her place. She’s got four strong apparatus now, in 2019 her floor was not so strong and she’s worked very hard to put that right. That’s one of her better pieces now.”