‘I might try athletics after I’m done with gymnastics’
Ellie Downie has dreams beyond next summer’s Tokyo Olympics, she tells Jeremy Wilson
It was in 2015 that Ellie Downie stood side by side with Dina Asher-smith as a nominee for the BBC’S Young Sports Personality of the Year award. Downie was victorious that night in Belfast, but both have since created history in their respective sports of gymnastics and athletics by winning European Championship gold.
Downie will tomorrow begin her quest to follow Asher-smith in winning global silverware at the World Championships in Stuttgart, but it is when our conversation turns to what might follow gymnastics that these still distant parallels potentially align.
“When I was little, I always wanted to try athletics, but I was just really good at gymnastics and so never did,” Downie says. “On sports day, I always got put in the 100 or 200 metres. Other than that, I’ve not touched it. But when we do our 25-metre run for the vault, our strength and conditioning coach is like, ‘You have got a really good sprinter’s run. Whatever time you do finish gym, I think you should try it’.”
And what does Downie think of the idea? “I’d give it a go. I would really love to.”
It should be added that the British Gymnastics strength and conditioning coach is Ruddy Farquharson, who works for the English Institute of Sport and also has considerable experience in track and field athletics.
It should also be added that gymnastics is a sport in which its elite participants peak significantly earlier than athletics and Downie, 20, is currently unsure whether she will continue beyond the Tokyo Olympics next summer.
“It’s weird to think in a year you could be done, which is why I haven’t decided what I want to do yet,” she says. “If I get a medal, will I be done or will I be more motivated to carry on? If I don’t get a medal, I might be disheartened and still want to carry on. I just have to see how it goes. It is crazy, doing it from so young [she started at three] I can’t imagine not coming in the gym every day and working hard all the time.”
The rhythm of a four-year Olympic cycle makes Downie far from unique in being unable currently to look beyond Tokyo, but to watch her complete a training session is to be left in no doubt that she could excel in other sports. Her speed, power, grace and athleticism are all obvious even on television, but what shine through are the precise skill and the physical and mental demands of her sport.
On the day we meet in Tokyo, where Downie and the rest of the British team are trialling training conditions and time acclimatisation in Japan, she has already been up since 6am to complete a fitness session. The entire team then train daily for between four and six hours, spread over a morning and afternoon session.
As performance director Jason Thomas explains, gymnastics is a necessarily time-intensive discipline because of the intricate levels of technical skill involved. Even a day or two away can leave some gymnasts lacking in “feel” and there is no short cut to the career-long process of building the difficulty level of their routines.
Downie’s focus is absolute during training and it is breathtaking to watch her finetune flips on a balance beam that is just 10cm wide. Elite gymnasts rarely hold back even in training and you can soon also see why serious injuries are relatively common. Giarnni Regini-moran and Nile Wilson, who were respectively returning from knee and spinal operations, were also training nearby, and Downie herself has missed 18 months since the Rio Olympics with an ankle injury that required two operations and the removal of several small bones.
It was a “strange” experience, particularly at the peak of her career in 2017 after becoming the first British gymnast ever to win a major all-around title. She returned to finish 11th at last year’s World Championships behind all-around winner Simone Biles and has progressed this year to a silver medal in the European Championships. Plenty of good judges believe that she has the potential to become Britain’s greatest gymnast.
“The Europeans were me back where I wanted to be and I could finally build from there,” she says. “I can increase my difficulty on pieces and I am in a really good place. It’s just frustrating to think how much I could have progressed if I wasn’t battling that injury.”
One positive was that the injury did not keep her away from the high bars, which she regards as her least natural event. “I’m strong and powerful with my legs – stamina for me is the hard part,” she says. Downie’s outlook is not to worry unduly about what the phenomenal Biles has been doing over recent years and to ensure that her own life is well balanced.
“I work hard in the gym, like a job, then you go home and chill,” she says. “It’s how I like to be or else it gets too much.”
She has also launched a leotard business with older sister Becky, herself an Olympic gymnast, to help ensure that there are lasting outside interests whenever she decides to stop.
The one permanent reminder of her dream is the Olympic rings tattoo on her lower left arm. “I like where they are because I can see them all the time,” she says and, however big the challenge, the prospect of her eventually attempting to reach the heights in another sport is fascinating.
One final question elicits a modest smile. So can Dina Ashersmith rest easy?
“She can give me some tips,” Downie says.