European Gymnastics Championships 2024: Max Whitlock on Harry Hepworth

When a local gymnastics coach came to his primary school, it changed Hepworth’s life.

“He performed a backflip. All I wanted to do after that was a backflip so I got myself signed up at Leeds Gymnastics Club and did a backflip and then kept going ever since,” he said.

For three years before that, from the age of five, he had been told not to do sport because he had Perthes disease, which affects the hip joint in children.

His right leg is 4cm shorter than his left, which he thinks has helped him with some of his tumbling in floor routines.

“The coaches like to say it gives me more torque off the floor when I go into twists because I might be leaning slightly so I guess it’s helped me in some ways,” he said.

“More force tends to go through one side and then it sort of hurts my back sometimes but other than that I think it it’s been a bit of an advantage for me.”

Hepworth upstaged his more experienced team-mates at the British championships last month, beating his idol Courtney Tulloch – the 2022 world bronze medallist – to the rings title.

He joins Tulloch, British all-around champion Joe Fraser, world vault champion Jake Jarman, James Hall and Luke Whitehouse at the Europeans.

“You’ve got to be a perfectionist and he’s definitely one of them,” Whitlock said of Hepworth. “He’s definitely one for the future, one who can hopefully bring us a lot of [good] results.”