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LONDON (Reuters) – Watching Bryony Page spring high into the air and complete a head-spinning triple somersault not once but three times on her way to becoming world champion for a second time it is hard to believe she once feared even getting on a trampoline.
Page was roared to victory last weekend in front of a home crowd in Birmingham as she repeated her 2021 title and is now eyeing a gold medal at next year’s Paris Olympics.
The 32-year-old has been bouncing on trampolines most of her life and she makes soaring 10 metres into the air to complete complex moves look as natural as walking.
But it has not always been so.
The Sheffield-based athlete’s trampoline career almost fizzled out in her teenaged years as she suffered “lost move syndrome” and became frightened to try a basic front somersault.
“It started when I got lost in a skill, you lose your awareness of where you are in space and time,” Page, who in 2016 became Britain’s first Olympic trampoline medallist with a silver in Rio and followed up with bronze in Tokyo in 2021, told Reuters. “You get lost and can’t pick up the vision points.
“It doesn’t happen very often but when it does it’s really scary. Everything started to spiral down. Instead of being just scared of that one skill I then got scared of another skill.
“I got to the point where I had no confidence of my ability on the trampoline. It’s like the body is trying to save itself and there’s a constant battle between the conscious and the sub-conscious, like a disconnect between body and part of the mind.”
Page, who likens the syndrome to the “twisties” experienced by American gymnast Simone Biles, became depressed and could have walked away but eventually she overcame her demons.
VERY DISTRESSING
“It’s very distressing and a lot of athletes experience it spatial awareness sports like diving, trampoline and aerial sports like snow boarding,” she said.
“I suffered with it for years and years and even now I sometimes get fearful before a training session. But I’ve learned ho to deal with the fear and overcome it.
“Not, for me, fear brings focus. It can be very useful if used in the right way.”
The trailblazing Page has elevated the profile of trampolining in Britain and hopes more gymnasts will focus on what she says is a beautiful sport she first fell in love with while training at her local gymnastics club in Nantwich.
“When we did the rotations like beam and so on the trampoline was part of that to warm up but I always wanted to stay on it for an hour, not just five minutes,” she said.
That passion remains as strong as ever and despite often competing with and against athletes in their teens, she insists that she is getting better with age.
“I’ve been trampolining for 23 years which is longer than some of the people I’m competing against have been alive,” Page says.
“But I feel younger and stronger and more mentally resilient than I did in my 20s. And I’ve got all of that extra muscle memory. But I still feel up and coming in some ways and still want to keep pushing those boundaries.”
While there is still a qualification process, Page’s results mean she is virtually certain to be in Paris where she hopes to complete her medal set with a gold.
“To go to my third Olympic Games would be incredible, especially with it being so close to home,” she said. “When I got the medal in Rio I felt that I had achieved my potential. But I’ve achieved a few more things, so it’s bonus time now!”
(Reporting by Martyn Herman, editing by Ed Osmond)
