The notification popped up in the Instagram account of Georgia Godwin, Australia’s best gymnast. The comment from a follower midway through last year, on a video of her completing the difficult “Weiler” move on the uneven bars, made her think – why not add an extra rotation?
That thought, and hundreds of hours in the gym, has led the Queensland athlete to a place in the official rule book of world gymnastics. The “Godwin” was ratified this week, meaning it is now an official building block for routines on the uneven bar. Judges will mark it, and other gymnasts will aspire to it.
“It was just an off-the-cuff comment on one of her posts, that we had a bit of a laugh at,” says Godwin’s coach, Josh Fabian. “It may have been a bit of a tongue-in-cheek comment because Georgia’s really good so someone just throws out there, ‘now do it with a full [rotation]’. That actually sparked something in Georgia, and she’s like, ‘you know what, I think I can’.”
In training ahead of next year’s Paris Olympics, for which an Australian women’s team has qualified for the first time since 2012, Godwin went to work. First she improved her skill in the base Weiler – a handstand on the bar, looping forward and down under, and then back up into a handstand – throughout February and March.
“We really focused on improving that base Weiler circle, and ultimately she achieved five to six Weiler circles in a row in training,” Fabian says. “Managing six in a row is pretty extraordinary, I don’t think there’ll be anyone in the world that could do six Weilers in a row.”
That foundation unlocked a pathway to the new skill, and Godwin laboured hour upon hour in the gym at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra. Once she cracked it as a standalone manoeuvre, Fabian and Godwin started building it into her routine.
Before she could benefit from the work in competition, she had to submit the new element to the International Gymnastics Federation. It was given an interim difficulty – E – one step up from the Weiler, and Godwin rolled it out at the Challenge Cup events in June in Osijek and Tel Aviv where she won five golds alongside two silver medal on uneven bars.
“Georgia has made that skill now with a full turn prior to arriving in handstand, and that’s unique,” Fabian says. “No one else in the world has been able to do that and put it in a competition routine.”
The final acceptance of the Godwin came this month. It is just the fifth time that an Australian woman has been named in the Code of Points, as issued by the International Gymnastics Federation, after Trudy Macintosh, Jacqui Dunn, Lauren Mitchell and Mary-Ann Monckton.
When the skill was accepted, Godwin said it had long been an ambition to have her name in the Code alongside “four other amazing WAG [women’s artistic gymnastics] Aussie athletes”.
“I worked hard, and to be the first in the world to compete the ‘Godwin’ is a dream come true,” she said. “I’m grateful for everyone who has helped me achieve this and to the gymnastics community for all the love and support.”
No-one else has seen Godwin’s work more than Fabian.
“It took a whole new construction of her bar routine to be able to fit that element into her routine. We had to reconstruct the routine, basically change the order of skills, put in some new skills,” he says.
And integrating it was a risk. At 26, Godwin is unusually old for a gymnast. Barely more than a year out from Paris, it was a bold move. “That definitely was a strategic decision,” Fabian says.
Godwin joined Fabian in Canberra less than a year ago, and he describes her and Godwin’s approach as “collaborative”. “We knew that if we could get that new routine with the Godwin in, not only would she be able to perform an element for the first time ever, but her actual finalised start score would be higher, so her difficulty value would end up higher, and then her overall score that she could produce would improve as well.”
With Paris barely eight months away, Fabian says Godwin – and the Australian team’s recent success – is the product of years of reform in gymnastics. The sport has endured a period of introspection since a 2011 Human Rights Commission review found gymnastics “a high-risk environment for abuse”.
“It’s a really outstanding result and I think probably is indicative of our culture change as well, improvement in athlete empowerment, and how we’re looking after athletes as well,” Fabian says.
But he admits Godwin might not have created her eponymous skill without that one Instagram follower. “Sometimes I guess you don’t really know where inspiration comes from.”
