Plenty more to come from Page says coach Whittaker-Smith

There's plenty more to come from British trampolining titan Bryony Page, according to one of the coaches who helped her become a world champion.

Tracy Whittaker-Smith has been the mastermind of British success in the gymnastic discipline, propelling Crewe star Page to two Olympic medals and a historic title in 2021.

The 31-year-old star sparkled for silver at this month's World Championships to fuel hope for a third tilt at the podium with Team GB at Paris 2024.

Whittaker-Smith sees no sign of Page slowing down, in part due to her own cultivated approach to promoting longevity in athletes.

"Bryony is absolutely still on an upward trajectory, she's still improving and wants to improve," said Whittaker-Smith, whose work is powered by National Lottery funding.

"She's still pushing the Paris boundaries and if you take care of athletes like we have with Bryony, there's no reason why they can't go on into their 30s.

"I'm really proud that as a programme we've had three women over 30 recently competing with the world's best."

Page finished fourth at the 2010 World Championships but her struggles to repeat that result saw her come to the attention of Whittaker-Smith.

The Northampton-based coach took over as head coach of the senior women's national team in 2012 and her productive partnership with Page blossomed from there.

"People saw 2010 as a fluke performance, an amazing performance," she said. "There were a lot of gaps in Bryony's performance.

"We had to go through planning with her and knowing exactly what she wanted at the end of it and working back from there.

"Bryony is a perfectionist. She would do small parts of her routine very perfectly, but rarely would she do the full routine.

"She loved working on the intricacies of individual elements and sometimes linking one or two of those together but she didn't have a robust plan in terms of the requirements of a competition and how she would be selected.

"We worked really hard on filling those gaps."

Page is the standard-bearer of British trampolining but Whittaker-Smith's relationship with the sport stretches back 40 years .

After a difficult upbringing in Catterick, she left school aged 15 and worked for Barclaycard, volunteering as a gymnastics coach in her spare time having previously practised the sport.

"My life started at the age of nine and that's when I started setting goals," she said. "I literally just wanted to help people achieve things they didn't feel they could."

She coached her first world junior champion in 1986 and worked with Jaime Moore, who became the first British female trampolinist at the Olympic Games at Sydney 2000.

Whittaker-Smith has now been recognised with the coaching award at UK Sport's PLx Awards, recognising outstanding contributions to the high-performance community.

She said: "I never dreamt of or needed awards, I just love what I do, but to be recognised by UK Sport and my fellow peers is really special.

"It's great that I'm recognised but I definitely wouldn't have been able to do it without the athletes I coach, all the coaches I work with, and everyone who's helped me."

The PLx awards are organised by UK Sport, the nation's high-performance experts. Through strategic leadership and investment of National Lottery and Government funds, UK Sport has transformed high-performance sport, winning more Olympic and Paralympic medals than ever before. For more information visit https://www.uksport.gov.uk/