Ruby Evans: Olympic Newbie to Commonwealth Champion
Get the Sports newsletter
Daily sports — scores, transfers, the storylines from the leagues you actually follow. Free.
- Ruby Evans competed at the Paris 2024 Olympics at age 17 and told BBC Sport she'd 'never really watched an Olympics' before, saying her phone wouldn't even turn on after competing due to the volume of notifications.
- Evans has since amassed 127,000 Instagram followers and nearly two million TikTok likes, and won historic gold for Wales in the floor final at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games after a tearful sixth-place all-around finish days earlier.
- At Paris 2024, Evans and her British teammates missed a medal by 0.2 points, finishing fourth in the women's team final; she followed up with silver in floor at the 2025 World Championships.
- Now 19, Evans says she dismisses online abuse by treating trolls like 'bullies at school' and refuses to let negativity affect her performance.
- For individual Olympic medal contention at LA 2028, Evans says she needs a second vault with a different entry, rating her current training progress as 'gear two' out of five.
- Evans and her team are competing at the European Championships in Zagreb, with the women's team final on Sunday serving as a stepping stone toward October's World Championships and Olympic qualification.
Why it matters: British gymnastics is in transition with new faces, and Evans — fourth by just 0.2 points in the Paris team final and now a Commonwealth floor champion — is positioned as its next marquee name. Her development of a second vault directly determines whether she can contend for individual Olympic gold in 2028, while the European team final this week feeds into October's World Championships, the formal LA 2028 qualification pathway.
Ask SkimNews
