The Peterborough Telegraph visits Huntingdon Gymnastics Club, the training centre of Team GB gold medal hopeful, Peterborough's Jake Jarman.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Hey Grace, I'd like to ask you about your first memories of when you first kind of came
00:19across Jake.
00:20Well, Jake was a member of our junior boys program when I first started back at the club
00:26in 2011, and as a young gymnast, full of energy, full of beans, like most young boys are within
00:33our program, but at the time he had some great attributes as a gymnast, but so did many other
00:40gymnasts at that age, and I wouldn't say he was a standout gymnast at that age, but he
00:45had some wonderful qualities, tried hard, and sort of was a little bit of a late bloomer
00:51I guess.
00:52Yeah, what would you say were some of his star qualities as a gymnast?
00:58Obviously amazing understanding of his spatial awareness and ability to twist, he is somebody
01:05that can take on board learning and take on criticism and sort of react in a really positive
01:13way and sort of start to understand, right I need to tweak this and go again and tweak
01:18this and go again, because obviously when you watch gymnastics you normally just see
01:23the finished article on television and actually there's 300, 400, 500, 600 goes that have
01:28gone about saying something's not been quite right, so you've tweaked it and changed it
01:31and tweaked it and changed it, and that ability to do that is what sort of stands most gymnasts
01:37apart and those that get really up to the top have that ability.
01:41You must have watched him for many years, a lot of hours, a lot of training sessions,
01:45you must have seen a big change in him.
01:48I think the biggest change I guess from watching him, Ben's his personal coach who worked with
01:55him all the way through since he was a young lad, is watching him develop as a young person
02:00into a young adult and now into an adult with us, he's started to take ownership of his
02:05programme to the stage about actually now he fully takes ownership of his programme
02:09and watching Ben, his coach, adapt his coaching style from being actually the person driving
02:15the programme to very much facilitating and advising and allowing Jake to drive his own
02:20programme and that's, I think that's been the most impressive thing I've seen from Jake.
02:26You must be very proud as well as a club manager here having someone like Jake.
02:30Massively proud, I mean we're proud of all of our gymnasts and we're in a very privileged
02:35position because we get to work with young people and see them grow and develop and achieve
02:41wonderful things and yeah it's something that, you know, that's what we strive to do is to
02:48allow gymnasts to reach their potential, whatever that potential is, I mean we've got a broad
02:53spectrum of gymnasts that come through the door but to have someone right at the top end of the
02:57sport inventing his own skills like the Jarman and having the ability to perform right at the
03:05top end of sort of Olympic standard gymnastics is amazing.
03:10Hoping for an Olympic gold potentially?
03:13He has the ability and as do many others in the field and it's who can do it on the day.
03:24Great, yeah so I wanted to ask you about your first memories of when you first met
03:27Jake and kind of yeah your memories of him as a young gymnast.
03:31Yeah so I came to the club in 2018 and when I first arrived Jake was
03:37already doing some phenomenal work and I was really impressed with everything I saw and
03:43the relationship that Ben and Jake had and how they worked well together to
03:49kind of keep things developing and improving and it was wonderful to watch.
03:54Okay and how much, you must have seen a lot of, you spent a lot of hours here, a lot of time,
03:58you've seen a lot of change in him over the years you've been here.
04:01Um yeah I mean when I started he was like a teenager, he's an adult now, he's a man now
04:08and watching him kind of transition through that phase of being a junior gymnast to a senior
04:15gymnast and him wanting it more and more and more has been fantastic to see and you know I'm sure
04:22Ben would be a testament to kind of that great journey that Jake's been on and will know far
04:28more about it than I ever would.
04:30So what are you, what have you been impressed most about Jake from the journey that you've
04:34seen him go on, what are you most impressed about him?
04:37One of the first things that I ever really remember about Jake is his phenomenal spatial
04:42awareness, he knows where he is in the air all the time and it's amazing to watch someone with that
04:51natural talent putting it then to good use and working hard with it and the end result of talent
04:57and hard work coming together is just phenomenal, phenomenal to watch.
05:01Yeah it must be great for all these young gymnasts we can see here and all the many
05:04kind of thousands you have to have someone like Jake to look up to you think?
05:07Yeah I you know I coach a lot of really young boys as well and they come in the gym and they're so
05:13excited to see Jake, they're so excited to say hello and they want to be the next Jake Jarman
05:19and it's inspiring, it's inspiring to see that kind of effect that one person can have on a
05:25whole culture and a whole community.
05:27And hopes of Paris, can we maybe see a gold medalist from Huntington Gymnastics Club?
05:31Oh well fingers crossed absolutely, not fingers crossed, we know it, we know it!