WILTSHIRE gymnast Jess Daykin shone on the international circuit earlier this month, claiming a silver medal while representing England at the Leverkusen Cup in Germany.

The competition, now in its 43rd year, is the oldest and most traditional artistic gymnastics competition in Europe and teams from England, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia and South Africa were all in action against thee teams from the host nation Germany.

West Lavington’s Daykin, from the Wiltshire School of Gymnastics in Melksham, started well by nailing her vault routine, although a fall on a new element in the bars gave the 16-year-old some concern.

With the tension palpable, Daykin showed the resilience and determination to pull herself together for a fine score of 13.35 on beam next before demonstrating a recently acquired tumble to gain a personal best of 13.05.

This gave her a hard-earned silver medal in the Senior Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG) competition and importantly saw her make a significant contribution to Team England.

Daykin was then back in action last weekend at the Rushmoor Rosebowl competition where she won three gold medals representing England once again.

On day one of the event, Daykin competed her new dismount combination to win the bar title by 0.1 of a point.

On the beam, she smashed her routine to score a big 13.634 to take a second gold of the day.

The competition continued into Sunday where Daykin finished first in the all around section out of 98 competitors to make it a hat-trick of victories.