Trampoline-Flying through the fear, Britain's Page aiming for Olympic gold

LONDON : Watching Bryony Page spring high into the air and complete a head-spinning triple somersault not once but three times on her way to becoming world champion for a second time it is hard to believe she once feared even getting on a trampoline.

Page was roared to victory last weekend in front of a home crowd in Birmingham as she repeated her 2021 title and is now eyeing a gold medal at next year's Paris Olympics.

The 32-year-old has been bouncing on trampolines most of her life and she makes soaring 10 metres into the air to complete complex moves look as natural as walking.

But it has not always been so.

The Sheffield-based athlete's trampoline career almost fizzled out in her teenaged years as she suffered "lost move syndrome" and became frightened to try a basic front somersault.

"It started when I got lost in a skill, you lose your awareness of where you are in space and time," Page, who in 2016 became Britain's first Olympic trampoline medallist with a silver in Rio and followed up with bronze in Tokyo in 2021, told Reuters. "You get lost and can't pick up the vision points.

"It doesn't happen very often but when it does it's really scary. Everything started to spiral down. Instead of being just scared of that one skill I then got scared of another skill.

"I got to the point where I had no confidence of my ability on the trampoline. It's like the body is trying to save itself and there's a constant battle between the conscious and the sub-conscious, like a disconnect between body and part of the mind."

Page, who likens the syndrome to the "twisties" experienced by American gymnast Simone Biles, became depressed and could have walked away but eventually she overcame her demons.

VERY DISTRESSING

"It's very distressing and