Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
CLAUDIA FRAGAPANE
Claudia Fragapane on how she’s been embracing the Strictly sparkle – and why the racy dresses hold no fear for her
The Olympic gymnast tells how Strictly’s put some sparkle into her life – and why the racy outfits don’t faze her one bit
Given her effervescent performances on Strictly, it’s a surprise to hear what gymnast Claudia Fragapane’s professional partner had to say to her when they first met. ‘AJ told me we’d have to try and dazzle me up a bit,’ she confides. ‘Especially my face. Basically he said I needed to learn to perform more to the crowd, to be more smiley.’
Which is odd because as a gold medal-winning gymnast – she came away with no fewer than four at 2014’s Commonwealth Games and competed at this year’s Olympics too – you’d think performing came naturally. She’s known for her incredible power and breathtaking feats on the floor, but then according to Claudia, bouncing about on a beam calls for altogether different skills than those required to take to the Strictly arena.
‘Gymnastics is totally different to dancing,’ she insists. ‘When I do my floor routine I do one dance and stick to it for about two years, so to do something completely different each week and keep changing it has been a real challenge. And some of my gymnastic moves are very still, just poses, so pure dancing and moving your hips was very new as well, especially with the acting side of things.’
There’s certainly been no shortage of ‘dazzle’ recently, as anyone who watched her Charleston in week three can testify. It brought in a splendid score of 36. Not bad for someone who, at just 19, is the show’s youngest contestant in ten years, not to mention one who, standing at just 4ft 7in, is also probably its shortest ever: when Claudia’s name was first announced, a couple of commentators joked that she would be dancing less nose-to-nose and more nose-to-chest with her professional partner.
Step forward then AJ Pritchard, who’s been squiring Claudia around the Strictly floor. Another relative youngster (he’s just 22), he may be familiar to Britain’s Got Talent viewers as he and dance partner Chloe Hewitt were semi-finalists back in 2013. He stands at around 5ft 2in, and rumour has it he was brought in especially to partner Claudia. ‘I don’t know about that,’ she protests. ‘But we got on straight away. He’s just like a big brother to me.’ Chloe has joined Strictly too and can be seen in the group dances throughout the series. ‘I bonded with her straight away when we were doing the group dance at the start. We’ve become really good friends,’ says Claudia.
Then again Clau- dia – a ball of fizzing energy in the flesh as well as on the dance floor – doesn’t have a bad word to say about anyone. ‘At the start I thought, “OK, I’m a bit nervous going in and meeting new people” but everyone, the celebrities and the pro dancers, were so friendly straight away and I just felt right at home,’ she says. This includes Ed Balls – ‘the most lovely guy’ with ‘a great sense of humour’ – and Birds Of A Feather star Lesley Joseph, who was voted off a fortnight ago. ‘We got on very well, she’s great. She used to joke that I could be her granddaughter.’ In the first show of the series head judge Len Goodman had a pop at Claudia and AJ for putting too much gymnastics in their routine – a bit less gymnastics and a bit more dancing was his exhortation – but Claudia can’t see what the fuss was about. ‘Both AJ and I thought the first dance should be about showing who I was and, well, I’m a gymnast so obviously I wanted to put some gymnastics in there.’ Being a gym--
nast cer tainly comes with one advantage – after appearing on international television wearing regulation gymnast leotards ‘ pretty high up my bottom’ she was unfazed by the notoriously skimpy Strictly outfits. ‘I was more worried about my arms because I’m very muscly so I wanted to cover them a little bit,’ she confides. ‘Then my sisters said, “Embrace the muscles”.’
Claudia has four sisters – she’s in the middle, with two older and two younger. ‘My mum and dad wanted a boy – well, my mum wanted a boy – and they kept trying and they had five girls,’ she grins. The family home is in Bristol, where her Italian father Paolo runs a children’s play centre and her English mother Teresa owns a hairdressing salon.
All of them are small apparently. ‘Mum and Dad are small, and so are my sisters. The oldest one is 5ft or 5ft 1in, the second oldest is 5ft 2in. It’s just who we are,’ she shrugs. Still, several inches below 5ft is particularly small. Has she ever been bullied? ‘Never,’ she insists. ‘I’ve always been out there, quite fiery and outspoken. I was one of those people who would get on with anyone. So as soon as I went into school everyone just got on with me and I got on with them.’ The infant Claudia certainly seems to have been a handful. ‘I was a very energetic child – as soon as I could walk I used to hang off the side of the doors and swing. I was literally jumping all over the place and doing cartwheels on my own, I think they just needed to find something that would tire me out. I used to drive my parents crazy,’ she recalls.
Anxious to channel that energy
Celebrating with her family after the 2014 Commonwealth Games somewhere, her parents took the five-year- old Claudia to a gymnastics club, where her talent stood out early on. ‘As soon as I started gym I said I always wanted to go to the Olympics, although I didn’t realise how hard that would be.’
Years of hard slog followed until she first hit the spotlight in 2014, arriving at Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games as an unknown and leaving with four gold medals clinking against her chest after a series of flawless flips, twists and tumbles. Two years later she was part of Team GB’s women’s gymnastic team in Rio. ‘It was an incredible experience,’ she says now. ‘The team came fifth which was a historic result for the GB women’s team, but then obviously looking back at the Rio Olympics makes me think I want to go to another one and achieve a medal, both as part of a team and a solo performer.’
Surely it can’t be easy for her parents to watch, though. Gymnastics can be quite perilous, with ankles and wrists frequently sprained and the high bars fraught with danger. They must have their hearts in their mouths every time she starts a sequence? ‘I think my mum finds it hard sometimes and she worries,’ she admits. ‘But I’ve been training since I was five or six, so if anything goes wrong I know how to save myself. You just can’t think that way.’
It’s a reminder that for all her youth and giggles, Claudia is very mature for her age. ‘ I think I am,’ she agrees. ‘ In the gymnastics world you have to grow up because you’re away a lot taking part in international competitions without your parents so you have to be independent .’ Although not that independent, I joke – her father is on record as saying Claudia’s not allowed to have a boyfriend until she’s 25. ‘That was honestly a joke,’ she laughs. ‘Having said that, at this precise moment boys haven’t actually popped into my mind yet. It will happen in good time.’
The family are clearly close-knit (Claudia’s father is known for cheering on her gymnastics performances wearing the blue football shirt of Italy). ‘Every time I’ve appeared on Strictly I’ve made everyone cry because they’re so proud of me, especially when I did the waltz,’ she says. ‘There’s been a sense of, “Finally, she’s enjoying something other than gymnastics.” They like that I’m doing something different.’
But for all the fun she’s been having on Strictly, Claudia the dedicated gymnast is already thinking about Tokyo 2020. Oh, and there’s another important goal too. ‘I’m still growing a little bit,’ she says. ‘I just want to hit 5ft.’
Strictly Come Dancing, tonight, 6.55pm, BBC1.