The Australian women’s gymnastics team has defended its Commonwealth Games gold medal with victory yesterday at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium.

AIS athletes Laruen Mitchell, Emily Little, Georgia Bonora, Ashleigh Brennan and Georgia Wheeler produced strong performances across the majority of apparatus to ensure they would take home the gold medal for the fourth consecutive time at the Commonwealth Games.

Australia started their program shakily on the beam as a few errors were recorded, including Mitchell who regards the beam as her favourite apparatus.
It was Mitchell’s first competition for 10 months after a long injury lay-off and the West Australian teenager was able to recover from her fall to show her class for the remainder of the program. The dual silver medallist from the 2009 World Championships shone on the vault, floor and uneven bars and propelled Australia towards the gold medal.

Despite the initial nerves, Australia recorded a combined score of 163.7 points, while England took silver with 158.2 and Canada bronze with 154.75.

Australia, unlike some of the other nations, chose to field a strong team at the Commonwealth Games, despite the World Championships falling later this month, but their overall strong performance is set to give the team good confidence ahead of the event.