History was made last night at the Barra Olympic Arena 18 year old Irish gymnast, Ellis O’ Reilly, captured a place at the 2016 Rio Olympics Games through her performance at the Aquecce Rio Test Event, the final qualifying event for the Rio Olympic 2016. She becomes the first Irish female gymnast to qualify for an Olympic Games. O’Reilly joins Kieran Behan who qualified on Saturday for Rio 2016.
Speaking of the achievement from Rio, Gymnastics Ireland CEO, Mr Ciaran Gallagher said “Ellis has made history for Gymnastics Ireland by qualifying to the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. This is a huge step forward for our women’s programme and in becoming the first Irish female gymnast to qualify to an Olympic Games Ellis’ achievement will serve to inspire to all the young up and coming Irish gymnasts who will want to follow in her footsteps. The focus for Ellis and coach Sam James now shifts to the summer Games where she will join Kieran Behan in flying the Irish flag at the most prestigious competition in our sport. It was an ambitious target set by Sally Filmer, our Performance & Technical Manager, four years ago to qualify 1 male & 1 female gymnast to Rio but today it is a target achieved. On behalf of our organisation I would like to congratulate Ellis & Kieran on this great achievement.
The 18-year-old gymnast who trains out of the Europa Gymnastics club in London and is coached by Sam James, was absolutely delighted with her performance and history making result.
Full list of qualifiers are available here – http://goo.gl/lhHXpT
Once uploaded, videos of Ellis competing at the test event can be viewed on the FIG youtube channel – https://www.youtube.com/user/figchannel
Note – Kieran Behan will compete in the Floor apparatus final at the HSBC Barra Olympic Arena on Monday April 18thbetween 1.10pm and 2.10pm (local time). With a score of 14.966, he qualified in 4th place.
Once uploaded, videos of Kieran competing at the test event can be viewed on the FIG youtube channel – https://www.youtube.com/user/figchannel
The full list of qualifiers from the Rio Test Event can be found here – http://www.fig-gymnastics.com/site/site/download?fileId=3257