The Sam Oldham Podcast

With just one month to go until the 2026 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Rotterdam, the Five-Way International in Stoke provided one final opportunity for athletes to impress ahead of team selections.
The competition brought together teams from Great Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, with both men’s and women’s artistic gymnastics taking place at Fenton Manor Sports Complex.
On the men’s side, British stars Jake Jarman, Luke Whitehouse and Courtney Tulloch helped Great Britain take the gold medal.
For Jarman, this was an especially important competition. After missing the European Championships and Commonwealth Games, Stoke offered him a valuable opportunity to hit the selection scores needed ahead of the World Championships team announcement later this month.
Whitehouse and Tulloch also competed on some of their less-favoured apparatus, perhaps giving us an indication of their strategy as we move further into the LA 2028 Olympic cycle.
Sol Scott and Jonas Rushworth, fresh from winning European team gold with Great Britain, delivered solid performances across the competition. But one of the standout performances came from Oakley Banks, who broke the 80-point mark for the first time in his career and finished top of the all-around standings.
Ultimately, Great Britain proved too strong for the other nations, many of whom fielded younger athletes hoping to use this competition as a springboard for the years ahead.
Elsewhere, France’s Anthony Mansard made his return to competition following an injury that had kept him out so far this year. Italy finished second, narrowly ahead of France in third, with Switzerland fourth and Germany fifth.
In this episode, we’ll take a closer look at the competition, the standout performances and what it could all mean as attention turns towards the World Championships in Rotterdam.
And finally, a big thank you to the British Gymnastics media team for allowing us to cover the international event in Stoke.

Today’s guest is British men’s artistic gymnastics coach, Joshua Champion.
Josh is the head coach of the men’s artistic programme at Notts Gymnastics Academy, where he works with some of the country’s top gymnasts.
This summer, Josh was part of the coaching team that helped England win silver in the men’s team final at the Commonwealth Games, with the team featuring two of his own gymnasts, Adam Tobin and Alex Yolshin-Cash. Another of Josh’s athletes, Hamish Carter, was also in Glasgow competing for Team Scotland.
In August, Josh was back on the competition floor with Great Britain, supporting the talented junior men’s team as they claimed back-to-back European team titles. His gymnast Zakaine Fawzi also enjoyed individual success, winning European silver on pommel horse alongside the team gold.
In this episode, we talk about Josh’s journey as a coach, the challenges facing men’s artistic gymnastics coaching, and the financial pressures facing the athletes and coaches working at the highest level of the sport.
This is the story of Josh Champion.

🥇 In 2026, we're launching a brand-new monthly gymnastics show on The Sam Oldham Podcast. Each month, we'll explore the biggest names, emerging storylines, and major championship build-ups in artistic gymnastics, alongside post-competition debriefs with some of the sport's most passionate experts, coaches, and analysts.
In this episode, I look back at the Men’s European Artistic Gymnastics Championships, which took place in Zagreb, Croatia, in August.
The men’s all-around final was won by Illia Kovtun, now representing the host nation, Croatia, by just one thousandth of a point. That incredibly small margin of victory was repeated in the junior event, where Daniil Smirnov, competing as a Russian athlete for Team World Gymnastics 2, took the title—demonstrating just how competitive the sport has become since the reduction to eight skills following the Paris Olympic Games.
In the team event, the Russian athletes dominated qualification, led by first-year senior Arsenii Dukhno and Daniil Marinov. However, an outstanding performance from Great Britain saw them claim the team title in Sunday’s final. The experience of Joe Fraser, Courtney Tulloch and Harry Hepworth proved to be the deciding factor in one of the most exciting competitions on the European stage in recent years.
All six individual apparatus finals were won by athletes from different countries, including a world-class pommel horse final that was eventually won by Gabriele Targhetta. Remarkably, the top four scores in that final would each have been enough to win the World Championships title less than twelve months ago—an indication of the extraordinary standard we might expect to see in October, when the world’s best gymnasts descend on Rotterdam.
Our mission remains the same: to share the stories behind the finest athletes in gymnastics and celebrate the sport we love.

Thank you to our listeners, sponsors, and supporters for being part of the journey.

Welcome to Episode 8 of The Gymnastics Show! 🎙️

Today’s guest is Australian tumbling champion Ethan McGuinness.
Ethan is a two-time men’s individual World tumbling champion, winning his first World title in 2022 and bringing the gold medal home to Australia again in 2025.
But his journey to the top has been anything but easy. In 2017, Ethan suffered a devastating injury, fracturing both his tibia and fibula in a freak accident while competing in the double mini trampoline event.
After years of hard work and dedication, he returned to become a World champion alongside his coach, Dima Kachan. At one point, Ethan was even working full-time laying turf in the early hours of the morning while chasing his dream of becoming a professional athlete.
Today, through events like Face Off and his growing social media presence, Ethan has helped shine a light on the incredible talent within the sport of tumbling.
This is the story of Ethan McGuinness.

🥇 In 2026, we're launching a brand-new monthly gymnastics show on The Sam Oldham Podcast. Each month, we'll explore the biggest names, emerging storylines, and major championship build-ups in artistic gymnastics, alongside post-competition debriefs with some of the sport's most passionate experts, coaches, and analysts.
In this episode of the Sam Oldham Podcast, I’m joined by Kensley Behel, the talented voice behind Neutral Deductions — a podcast, website and social media platform dedicated to men’s artistic gymnastics.
Together, we recap the Commonwealth Games and discuss some of the standout performances, including all-around champion Reuben Ward, multiple Canadian apparatus gold medallist Félix Dolci, and Australian star Jesse Moore.
Kensley also breaks down the recent US National Championships in Phoenix, Arizona, which doubled as the selection event for the US men’s World Championships team. We look at the leading all-around performances from champion Fred Richard, silver medallist Shane Wiskus and exciting young talent Danila Leykin, who finished third. We also discuss strong specialist performances from Kameron Nelson and Patrick Hoopes, which secured their places on the team heading to Rotterdam in October.
Finally, we preview the upcoming European Championships in Zagreb, Croatia. Great Britain will be looking to defend their 2025 team title, while the competition will feature the return of a Russian men’s team to the European stage after several years away.
The all-around title promises to be fiercely contested, with Joe Fraser, Arsenii Dukhno, Illia Kovtun and former champion Adem Asil among the leading contenders. Meanwhile, some of the biggest names in the sport will battle for individual apparatus titles, including Harry Hepworth, Eleftherios Petronias , Rhys McClenaghan and Artur Davtyan.
Our mission remains the same: to share the stories behind the finest athletes in gymnastics and celebrate the sport we love.
Thank you to our listeners, sponsors, and supporters for being part of the journey.
Welcome to Episode 7 of The Gymnastics Show! 🎙️