Purvis back in the new routine

DANIEL Purvis went back to his roots to put the building blocks in place for a return to the international arena.

The Southport gymnast, whose family hail from Tayside, eased himself back into competition at the Scottish National Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Perth, taking part in the pommel horse, floor and parallel bars, and finishing fourth in the all-around with 40.568 points.

It was his first competition since last year’s London Open and since he was controversially left out of the GB team for the Rio Olympics. After winning the all-around title for the last three years, Purvis was using the championships to try out new routines.

He won the pommel horse with 13.600 points but was upstaged on the floor by Commonwealth Games’ team-mate and Southport clubmate Frank Baines, who produced a strong performance with 13.567 points. Purvis was edged into second (13.334) and also finished second in the parallel bars (13.634) where Baines produced an excellent routine to reach 14.067 points.

“The last four years have been tough and it has been good to have a little break after a hard Olympics cycle,” Purvis said. “I’m now getting my body back into competition, and building up to the Gold Coast 2018.”

Kelvin Cham edged out City of Glasgow team-mate David Weir to take the all-around title with a total of 75.734 points, Weir scoring 75.335. Baines took bronze (64.369).

Liam Davie, part of Scotland’s medal winning team at Glasgow 2014, returned to competition after a shoulder operation, scoring 13.300 on the high bar to win the event.

City of Glasgow’s Shannon Archer won the women’s all- around title with 49.084 points after winning three of the four disciplines. She came out top in the vault (13.167), floor (12.600) and beam (12.400) and was fourth equal in the uneven bars which was won by Dundee’s Sofia Ramzan (11.250).

Ramzan went on to take allaround silver with 46.550 points ahead of City of Glasgow’s Carly Smith, who competed for Scotland at the last Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

Defending champion Cara Kennedy only took part in the uneven bars where she was sixth (10.500).

The individual finals are today.