Mairead Kavanagh Gymnastics
Mairead Kavanagh’s word on gymnastics is about as authoritative as it gets. The Cork native is one of the world’s top judges in women’s artistic gymnastics, with a CV that includes multiple World Championships and the 2016 Olympic Games.
‘The opening ceremony was very big for me,’ she says of Rio 2016. ‘And the buzz and adrenaline rush of judging at an Olympic Games. It was [USA gymnastics superstar] Simone Biles’s first Olympics. I had judged her at the world championships the previous three years, but to see her reach her goal and get her gold medals in so many different disciplines was really memorable.
‘Having our first Irish female gymnast there [Ellis O’Reilly] was a huge achievement. When I did gymnastics [Kavanagh represented Ireland in the 1994 European Championships], you pulled the equipment out of the store room every time you trained, and now we have so many full-time centres. So to see the result of that evolution was hugely memorable.’
Gymnastics is now a flourishing sport here. Club membership has increased sevenfold to around 35,000 since 2005. Kavanagh notes that it’s an excellent way of developing core strength and coordination skills that are applicable to many other sports.
‘Just to learn how to run, to turn, to fall,’ she says. ‘My two boys play GAA and other sports and when they fall I think, ‘Brilliant, that was a great fall,’ because they tuck in their elbow, they don’t fall and dislocate their elbow or hurt their arm. And even things like turning with the ball. Gymnastics teaches all those core things.’
At her club in Douglas — home of Tokyo-bound gymnast Meg Ryan and now one of the biggest sporting clubs in Ireland with 2,000 members — ‘the whole ethos is to get you coaching and judging quite early on’.
‘I have always loved judging,’ says Kavanagh. ‘I took to it like a duck to water.’
It took more than 20 years of study and exams before she became a ‘Grade 1’ judge, but Kavanagh says it is experience that marks out the best, and without it ‘you’d be bricking it’.
‘I’d 100 per cent say experience is the main thing. You come up against situations that would be very stressful,’ she adds.
‘For example, the beam is kind of the worst apparatus to be on from a women’s point of view, because it’s very controversial and it’s very technical. We would have a lot of inquiries on the beam score.
‘So you get used to sitting there waiting with the headset on, discussing the score with the head
people. The cameras being on you and the stress of that, and the crowd maybe clapping. The experience of dealing with that stress really makes you better and stronger, and more decisive and confident in your own ability.’
Kavanagh — who is taking a break from judging after a family bereavement — doesn’t think the unusual conditions around this year’s Olympics will affect her clubmate Ryan or Ireland’s other great hope Rhys McClenaghan, the 21-year-old Down man who is already Ireland’s most decorated gymnast with medals at European and world level.
‘They have been preparing for it and they’ve all had competitions in that environment now. They all have their own routines that they go through before they compete, and they have such strong support through the institute now for getting them mentally tough, mentally prepared. I just feel for the families at home that can’t support them, because there are parents behind these two athletes that have done everything to get them where they are.’