Harry Hepworth and Luke Whitehouse: What's next for Olympians after heroes welcome at Leeds Gymnastics Club

For more than a decade these two dedicated young men have diligently learned their craft and honed their skills at Leeds Gymnastics Club.

Evening after evening, hour upon hour, countless competitions, limitless lifts from their parents.

But they were always special talents: Luke a two-time European floor champion, Harry a three-time world championship finalist.

In Paris they became Olympians, fourth place in the team final in a Great Britain squad headlined by Max Whitlock, sixth in the floor final for Halifax’s 22-year-old Whitehouse and then 24 hours later, the icing on the cake, a bronze medal for 20-year-old Leeds lad Hepworth in the vault.

“The bronze means a lot,” smiles Hepworth, as he stands alongside Whitehouse having just been greeted by hundreds of well-wishes at Whitkirk Cricket Club, just down the Leeds Ring Road from their training base at Seacroft.

“I’ve trained for I don’t know how many years now, 12 years or more I think it is to get this bit of metal around my neck.”

It was a celebratory theme on a balmy evening in east Leeds on Wednesday, the gymnastics family coming together to celebrate two of their own who have shown them what is possible, Hepworth and Whitehouse overwhelmed at the reception they received.

“I didn’t know that many people could fit into such a small space, it’s nuts,” laughed Hepworth.

“We wouldn’t be here without any of these guys. We’re both very grateful. I would never be where I am now without coaches, girlfriend, family.”

Whitehouse was similarly effusive. The elder of the two could be forgiven for being a bit jealous that he didn’t have that shiny piece of metal hung around his neck as well but there was only pride in what his long–time training partner had achieved.

“I remember watching Harry’s final,” says Whitehouse, after his own competition had finished in a sense of what might have been 24 hours earlier.

“I was even nervous waiting in the stands for that score to come up.”

“I went into it a bit blank,” says Hepworth, picking up the story.

“I’d done the rings final about an hour earlier and had a blast. There was only three tenths between me and third place so it was really tight and I finished seventh. I just focused on what I had to do for vault, that was the only mindset change.”

He was up second in the eight-man final, landed his two routines and had to sit and watch the others come through. Only two men would beat his score. “It felt like an eternity,” Hepworth smiles now.

Gymnastics is one of the more exciting sports but because of the subjective nature of the judges scoring, one of the hardest to predict.

A day earlier, Whitehouse went up seventh of eight competitors in the floor final and came off the mat thinking he had done enough to win an Olympic medal, only for the judges to have spotted a tiny error.

“Unfortunately I landed low on the second tumble which…” he shrugs his shoulders, having been marked down into sixth place.

“If you do it under 90 degrees you lose the value of the connection, so 0.2 off the bonus and may be 0.5 off the execution. I was aware of it at the time but at the same time thought people got away with some things. Rules are rules so fair enough. Honestly I thought I’d done enough to get a medal so it was gutting at the time but looking back I can be really proud of what I did that day.”

Next up for both is a holiday: “I’m just going to keep riding this little wave until it settles down on the beach,” smiles Hepworth.

Then it’s back to it at Leeds Gymnastics Club, with their fellow 2,000 or so members, perfecting those routines.

“At the end of the closing ceremony there was a video where they do the passing of the flag to the LA Games,” says Whitehouse, who revealed they met Tom Cruise at the closing ceremony.

“That was so inspiring and gave me more desire to get straight back in the gym. We’ve got Europeans and world champs next year - it’s a sport that has no off-season.”

“We’re working until Christmas and then it’s straight into the competitions,” continues Hepworth, as he looks around the packed cricket field at Whitkirk.

“Our sport doesn’t get much viewership unless it’s at the Olympics, so even just to increase it a little bit for the national championships would be amazing.”

These two Yorkshiremen have certainly done their bit.