Leaping for gold

Grandstand: World Champs Sunday, BBC Two, 1705

To an outsider, trampolining can look like one of the easier sports you could get involved in.

After all, it's what made PE lessons at school worth turning up to - the chance to see just how close an earth bound human can get to flying.

But if you think this is just a sport for school-kids who think they should born with wings you would be wrong - trampolining is an Olympic discipline, and one that requires a considerable amount of skill and strength.

Gymnasts propel themselves to a height of around eight metres, landing on a trampoline measuring 5.2m x 3.0m, and aiming to combine style, flair and precision.

And as Martin Laws, club chairman and coach of Gillingham jumpers, Britain's largest trampoline club, explains, trampolining has a lot more to it than simply bouncing up and down.

"At the main events judges mark the contestants on three main criteria: movement, style and technique," he says.

"They're looking for where the gymnast is on the trampoline - ideally they will be landing and taking off from the centre.

BRITISH HOPES Men: Gary Smith (Jumpers) Paull Smyth (Edgbarrow) Women: Claire Wright (Edgbarrow) Kirsten Lawton (Edgbarrow)

"Their style on the trampoline will be assessed - is the gymnast's routine aesthetically pleasing?

"And the judges will take into account the difficulty of the moves attempted, and to what degree of success they are executed."

Physically the gymnasts have to be strong - their propulsion isn't generated simply as a result of the trampoline's elasticity - and it takes effort to keep the jumps up to a consistently high standard.

The sport also demands mental strength, both because of its status as an individual event, and the breadth of moves that have to be performed in such a short time.

Laws' club boasts more than 1500 members, proving both how popular the sport is and the potential there is in the country.

Lee Brearly was Britain's best placed man at the last Olympics - the first time the sport was staged at the games - finishing sixth, but hopes are high for an improved showing next year.

Russia, which in Alexandre Moskalenko and Irina Karavaeva boasts the reigning Olympic champions, is the only country that can rival Britain in terms of regular participants.

Traditionally British hopes in the Olympics have been pinned on rowing, sprinting and sailing.

Maybe not next year - but the figures suggest that one day trampolining might just guarantee us a few more medals of the golden variety.