'I won gold medal with a broken wrist'

One of Notts' brightest prospects for the 2012 Olympics is teenage gymnast Sam Oldham from Keyworth. Just 18 months ago Sam helped Britain to team gold in the European Championships, despite breaking his wrist. In the second part of a series on our medal hopes, Jennifer Scott speaks to Sam about the hours he devotes to his sport

IF you heard a teenage boy declaring to his mates that he'd won European gold one-handed, you'd probably think, "Little braggart!"

But 16-year-old Sam Oldham is neither a bragger nor a daydreamer. In fact he's the exact opposite: quietly modest, realistic, a nose-to-the-grindstone type.

His gold came as part of a gymnastics team win at the European Championships in Lausanne in 2008. The Brits were neck-and-neck with the Germans and the Russians. Everything rested on the final event – Sam's event.

Suddenly, halfway through the floor routine, he felt his left wrist snap.

"It was horrible. I knew I'd done something. My arm was just... bending," he recalls.

"I had to try to carry on otherwise we wouldn't have won. On my last tumble, I had to do a handspring and a somersault with one arm! I don't think the judges could tell – but I could when I watched it back.

"It didn't hurt at the time – the adrenaline stopped the pain. I picked up the medal and rushed off to hospital."

The broken wrist was put in plaster and kept him out of training for two months.

"We were thinking he didn't look very happy with the medal!" jokes Jenny, his grandma, affectionately. She's as proud of Sam as she is of his siblings – 14-year-old Jack, 12-year-old Olivia and five-year-old Isabel.

"He hasn't changed," she says, fondly. "He's still polite. That's what gymnastics does for you. It's a very disciplined sport."

Sam started in gymnastics aged seven. He did a few handstands and forward rolls during a schools competition in Keyworth. They must have been good ones because a teacher suggested he should go for a trial at Rushcliffe Leisure Centre, home of the Notts Gymnastics Club. Once there, he joined a class of 15, running around on crash-mats and leaping over the pommel horse.

"I'm the only one still doing it!" he smiles.

Football is the family game. Sam's father Bob was a former Forest junior and his brother Jack has inherited the talent. Sam goes to watch him play.

He was a good footballer himself but he opted to drop it so he could concentrate on the gymnastics.

Until the age of 14, he was part of the Rushcliffe programme, attending the adjoining gym and comprehensive. "It's a really good set-up," he says. Then he moved to Huntingdon, in Cambridgeshire, to train with Beijing gymnastics star Lewis Smith. Sam lived with another athlete's family and was home-schooled.

It was hard being separated from his family. But the home schooling did its job. He got six GCSEs last summer. All bar one of them were A-C grades.

At 16, Sam moved back home to his family in Keyworth to attend Loughborough University gym, under the guidance of national coach Russian Sergey Sizhavov.

He trains from nine to five, six days a week. The rest of the time, he does "normal stuff" – goes on Facebook, supports Manchester United, sees his mates.

In 2001 Sam started competing for Notts in regional competitions. His first international was in 2005 at the age of 12 in the Austrian Futures Cup. He came joint first with a Japanese gymnast. He got two golds at the European Youth Olympics in Finland last year.

Often he travels with his coach, not his parents.

"But it's good to get to travel the world," he says.

He certainly clocks up some air miles. He was in Moscow before Christmas and he's due to go to Mexico soon.

Closer to home, he has just returned from a training camp in Lilleshaw. He will remain with the junior squad until August, when he'll move up to the seniors.

Sam could be going to the Commonwealth Games in India, while the seniors are saved for the World Championships in October.

He's already experienced the "big-game buzz". He went to Beijing as part of the British Olympic Association's 2012 Ambition programme to help young athletes experience the Games.

"Normally when you go away you have to compete and you're full of nerves so it was great just to relax and enjoy it," he says.

While he was there, his teammate Lewis became the first British gymnast in 100 years to win a medal in an individual event.

"Lewis was awesome but we couldn't get anywhere near him," he grins. "But we had a trip into the Olympic Village and I saw Paula Radcliffe and Steve Redgrave. It was great but it also made me really aware of how big 2012 is going to be. It makes you nervous when you think about it.

"Obviously there's not going to be another chance to have an Olympics in our own country during my career. I feel really lucky. I'm going to work my socks off and hopefully get in the team."

He's already visited the O2 Arena where the gymnastics are being staged in 2012.

"It was awesome – a massive arena. One of the biggest I've been in," he says.

He will find out whether he's made the team not long before the Olympics.

"At the moment, the standard in this country is really high," he says, with a frown. "In the World Championships we were second overall and we've never even got in the top 10 before."

There are six disciplines in gymnastics: floor; pommel horse; the rings; the vault; the parallel bars and the high bar. At the moment, Sam's favourite is the high bar.

But he says: "I'm going to stay an all-rounder for as long as I can. I've put so much work into it. I wouldn't want to waste it."

The perfectionism of gymnastics can be frustrating. Sam likes to get it right.

"It does your head in but, when you do perfect it, it feels amazing," he enthuses. "When you're on a high, flying through the air, it's such a rush."

jennifer.scott@nottinghameveningpost.co.uk