Becky Downie

Becky Downie’s career spans almost two decades of British women’s gymnastics, from Beijing 2008 to the 2026 World Championships, built around the uneven bars.

Significance

Downie is one of Great Britain’s most successful uneven bars gymnasts: European champion in 2014 and 2016, Commonwealth champion in 2014 and world silver medallist in 2019. She was part of two team firsts for British women — the first world team medal, bronze at Glasgow 2015, and the first European team title, at Antalya in 2023, where her final bars routine sealed the win. An element in the women’s Code of Points is also named after her.

Background

Downie was born in 1992 in Nottingham and took up gymnastics at the age of seven. She competed for England at the Commonwealth Games and for Great Britain internationally, as a specialist on uneven bars who also won medals on beam earlier in her career.

The Downie

The 2025–2028 women’s Code of Points lists an uneven bars element named after Downie: a backward stalder on the high bar with a counter movement in a piked position, followed by a reverse hecht over the high bar to hang (element 4.602). In simpler terms, the gymnast circles backwards around the high bar with straddled legs, then releases and flies back over the bar in a piked shape before re-catching it. The Code lists it in the top (F/G) column of its stalder-element table. It is often described informally as a “piked stalder Tkachev”. See uneven bars release moves and how gymnastics skills get named.

Major championships

• Commonwealth Games — team and uneven bars gold for England at Glasgow 2014, after team silver and beam bronze at Melbourne 2006.
• European Championships — uneven bars gold in 2014 (Sofia) and 2016 (Bern), team gold in 2023 (Antalya) and team silver in 2024 (Rimini), plus further team, bars and beam silvers.
• World Championships — team bronze at Glasgow 2015 and uneven bars silver at Stuttgart 2019, behind Belgium’s Nina Derwael.
• Olympic Games — she competed at Beijing 2008, Rio 2016 and Paris 2024. At Paris, Great Britain finished fourth in the team final and she finished seventh in the uneven bars final.

Recent seasons

After Paris 2024, Downie had shoulder surgery and returned to international competition at the 2026 European Championships in Zagreb, where Great Britain finished fourth in the team final. She won the British uneven bars title in March 2026, and at the 2026 World Championships in Rotterdam scored 14.066 on bars in qualification, though Great Britain’s women missed the team final.

Where her career fits

Downie’s results bridge the eras of Beth Tweddle and the team successes of the 2020s, alongside gymnasts such as Jessica Gadirova and Alice Kinsella. For what judges look for on her apparatus, see uneven bars.