British WAG and MAG talk 2025

[KorbutFan]

At the same competition Lisa Mason did an absolutely stunning gainer flick + Arabian on beam (in 1997!) There’s a video of it on YouTube.

 

[Puffin]

All I could find was that she was named to the 2000 Olympic team although she hadn’t had the sort of success in 98-00 we might have expected. However she was injured whilst training in Australia and was replaced by Paula Thomas. She came back after injury to place 3rd at the 2001 British and competed at worlds that year however her scores seem pretty low compared to Tweddle and Willis. She doesn’t seem to have competed after that. Her coach was Carol Malone, who judged at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics.

I want to say that back in the day, John Pirrie talked about her in an article criticising the British set up at the time. There was definitely something late 90s and early 00s where some GB squad members were effectively forced to live and train full time at Lilleshall with national team coaches, not their personal coaches. It went on until about 2002 when it was challenged by social services who said there was inappropriate provision for under 18s to live there. So I don’t know if perhaps Melissa Wilcox was injured or badly managed by national team coaches that she’d rather not have been training with.

IIRC organizations had to become compliant with the safeguarding aspects of the 2004? Children's Act if they were offering residential accommodation to children under 18. It became a lot stricter and more expensive for organizations to become compliant. I think they also became liable for OFSTED inspections of residential arrangements.

I have read that it was also one of the reasons for the huge drop-off in the numbers of boarding schools offering boarding to the under 11s because a lot more staff and oversight was required.