Episode Details

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Host Winston Powell sits down with Sam, Head of Sport at Scottish Gymnastics, for a wide ranging conversation on her 38 years in the sport. Sam walks through her journey from a taster session at four years old in West Yorkshire, to becoming a TeamGym gymnast and coach in Scotland, to leading the performance side of a national governing body. Along the way she covers coach and judge development, common misconceptions about governing bodies, and the excitement building around a home Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Sam started gymnastics at four through a free taster session at a local leisure centre, moved into artistic through a Halifax club, and later discovered TeamGym in Scotland after moving up for university at 18.
• TeamGym is closer to rugby than to artistic in feel, and Sam sees it as one of the best routes to prolong a gymnastics career because it does not demand the same 27 to 30 hour weeks as elite artistic.
• Coaching is more nerve wracking than competing. As a female TeamGym coach in Scotland, she was often spotting senior male gymnasts bigger than her, with real safety consequences if the timing went wrong.
• Scotland supports all eight gymnastics disciplines, which makes for a genuinely varied job. Each one requires different coaching approaches, funding models, and levels of gymnast contribution.
• Coach development at Scottish Gymnastics is deliberately behavioural, not technical. Communication, leadership, and working with parents and peers are treated as core skills, not soft ones.
• Judges are a hidden backbone of the sport. Scottish Gymnastics' next big project is future proofing the judging pipeline, especially at Brevet and international Brevet level.
• Governing bodies are often invisible until something goes wrong. A lot of their real value is in safeguarding, compliance, coach and judge support, event experience, and making sure the sport is safe enough for athletes and parents to not have to think about it.
• Commonwealth Games 2026 in Glasgow is set to be huge for Team Scotland gymnastics. Selection calls are done by phone with human follow up, not email, and the target is a team medal plus individual apparatus medals.

BEST MOMENTS:

• "It was as if it was a mask. I don't know how to explain it, but I was nervous going in, and then I just performed."
• "We don't develop better people without better coaches."
• "Gymnastics doesn't exist without coaches, and it doesn't exist without judges."
• "You only know what you know."
• "Glasgow certainly is going to roar."
• "We treat them as human beings. It doesn't change the outcome, but it matters."
• "It might even come down to execution and not the difficulty of the routine."

LINKS:

Website: https://winstonpowell.co.uk/
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ABOUT THE HOST:

As a member of the Senior Great Britain Squad, Winston Powell brings firsthand experience to every episode. His achievements include being the Under 18 English Champion in 2023 and reaching the finals in three events at the Junior World Championships the same year: the All-Around, Parallel Bars, and Horizontal Bar finals, qualifying 7th for the All-Around. With five international appearances as a GB gymnast, he has gained invaluable insights into the s