Schoolgirl Lourdes Gerrard achieved medal-winning glory for a Bahrain gymnastics academy team appearing in international competition for the first time.
The 12-year-old star with elite sporting prowess in her genes powered to silver success at the weekend’s Little Stars Abu Dhabi Invitational tournament in the handspring vault.
The St Christopher’s School student was part of a nine-member team of gymnasts from the SPARTA sports and arts academy.
Gerrard showed no sign of nerves as she sprinted towards the springboard, initiated the upward flight through the ‘Heel Drive’, pushed off the platform using her shoulders, wrists and fingers, somersaulted in midair and landed perfectly on her feet, eliciting huge applause from the audience and wowing the judges.
The Year Seven student is the youngest daughter of English football legend Steven Gerrard and model Alex Curran and showed that she could well be the next sporting superstar from her family.
“She was terrific,” Glenn Smith, the head of the academy, who had accompanied the school squad aged between 10-12 years old, to the UAE, told the GDN.
Smith, a former international gymnast who was a member of the British Gymnastics Tumbling Team and part of the squad that won the European Championships in Metz, France, in 2006, has been in his current position since 2019.
“They were all terrific,” Smith said, adding that he and assistant coach Sara Axtell were both immensely proud of their gymnasts.
“They did so really well! Sara and I are so, so, proud of what they have been able to accomplish. We were hoping that they would be able to make a mark in their first time in international competition but they exceeded all our expectations.”
And, Smith said, while all the other girls had been enrolled at St Christopher’s for some time, Lourdes had joined the school only three months ago after her father moved his family to Bahrain when he took up his new position as the manager of Saudi Pro League club Al Ettifaq, based across the causeway, last July.
“She has come along brilliantly in this little time,” Smith said about Lourdes, who has two elder sisters – both studying in the United Kingdom – and a younger brother attending the junior school in Bahrain.
“She had done some gymnastics at school in the UK before but, obviously, she had to adjust to a new school, a new environment, and the way she handled it all was really wonderful.
“Overall, for the entire squad, this was going to be a tough competition so, in the lead-up to it – and as we headed to the tournament – I was prepared to err on the side of caution.
“But all the girls did outstandingly well and this experience is going to stand them in very good stead for the future. The Abu Dhabi Invitational isn’t an annual tournament, they hold it pretty regularly so we might end up going there again quite soon and, next time, the girls will know what they’ll be required to do to win more medals.”
Lourdes’ father Steven is considered to be one of Liverpool’s greatest players as well as one of the best English footballers ever. Before taking up his current assignment with Al Ettifaq, he had managed Scottish champions Rangers from 2018-21 and Aston Villa from 2021-22.
His arrival in the kingdom, along with his family, created quite a buzz with Radio Bahrain even creating a ‘#G-watch’ feature on its morning show by asking citizens to call in and report a Gerrard sighting.
And, in mid-September, the ever-sporting Gerrard surprised the morning show hosts Chiara Glorioso and Martin Lowes by calling in to the station as he took Lourdes to school one day, telling them that he was only doing so because his daughter had asked him to.
&uuid=(email))