Explaining her decision to return to elite gymnastics, Amelie Morgan starts with an apology.
“I’m sorry about my accent!” she laughs, as it becomes clear that her Bristolian brogue has been replaced by a distinctly Americanised twang.
That’s because since we last saw her winning team bronze at the Tokyo Olympics, Morgan has been living her best life in Salt Lake City.
“When I first got here, nobody could understand me,” she explains. “They kept asking me ‘what are you saying?’ so I think I just adapted. When you’re around it, it’s so easy.”
Capitalising on the delay to the Games, Morgan burst onto the scene to combine with Jessica Gadirova, Alice Kinsella and Jennifer Gadirova to win Team GB’s first WAG team medal.
Then it was straight to the University of Utah and into the melting pot of college gymnastics.
NCAA gymnastics is a parallel universe where meets take place in front of 9,000 season ticket holders, are broadcast by ESPN and gymnasts build legions of devoted fans on social media.
Morgan wanted to test herself in this environment and against a totally different scoring system, where routines are judged against a perfect ten.
“I really felt after Tokyo that I had reached my pinnacle,” says Morgan, “but I feel like I’ve progressed so much more than I ever could have imagined.
“The two systems teach you very different things. NCAA has taught me to be a lot cleaner in my gymnastics. Sometimes, in elite, you’re just focused on packing as much difficulty as you can.
“It’s helped me focus on the small details, which I never really had time for before, to really refine those routines. I guess that’s what makes it so exciting, because everyone is more or less on the same difficulty level. It becomes about sticking every landing and showing really good form.
“We compete pretty much every weekend and it’s given me so much experience. That makes you more consistent, you find your rhythm and what works for you in that pressured environment.”
Morgan certainly seems to have found the formula. The Utah team website records her hitting every single one of the 60 routines she has attempted in their colours, receiving a number of awards in the process and being named captain for the ongoing season.
It had to be something special, therefore, to lure her away. The prospect of a second appearance for Team GB at the Olympic Games has done just that.
Morgan has been back in elite training and will make her return at this weekend’s English Championships in Telford, the first step in her bid to become one of the five female artistic gymnasts who earn Olympic selection.
The all-important British Championships follow in Liverpool later in March.
“For the longest time after Tokyo, I kept being asked, ‘are you gonna go back?’” she remembers, “and I always said that I didn’t want to. I only started thinking about it a bit more recently.
“I’m someone who loves to push myself and challenge myself. Going into this, I wanted it to be a bonus. It’s not going to be the end of the world if I don’t make it.
“This comeback is for me and because I love the sport. I miss doing all the cool, difficult tricks I did before, I wanted to challenge myself by trying to see if I could get those routines back.”
Morgan has already received supportive messages from her Tokyo team-mates. The desire to experience an Olympics free of the shackles of a pandemic is clearly a key motivation.
“Only the four of us will know what went into that Olympics,” she said. “So many things that we didn’t want to happen, happened. I think we did an amazing job at blocking out all of the adversity and just going and doing our gymnastics that we had worked so hard on.
“Obviously Tokyo wasn’t the Olympics we expected or wanted. No-one could come and share it with us, it was just a very strange experience.
“If this doesn’t work out, I am totally okay with that. This is just a bonus at this point in my career, but if I didn’t try it, I think I would regret it. That's the main reason."
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