The Sam Oldham Podcast

🥇 In 2026, we're launching a brand-new monthly gymnastics show on The Sam Oldham Podcast. Each month, we'll explore the biggest names, emerging storylines, and major championship build-ups in artistic gymnastics, alongside post-competition debriefs with some of the sport's most passionate experts, coaches, and analysts.

In this episode of the Sam Oldham Podcast, I’m joined by Kensley Behel, the talented voice behind Neutral Deductions — a podcast, website and social media platform dedicated to men’s artistic gymnastics.

Today, we're looking ahead to the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, taking place in Rotterdam from Saturday the 17th to Sunday the 25th of October.

With qualification for the LA 2028 Olympic Games on the line, there's plenty to get excited about. The top three men's and women's teams will secure their places at the Olympics, making this a huge competition for the world's best gymnasts.

In today's episode, we'll be focusing on the men's team final, the leading all-around contenders and the individual apparatus specialists.

Some of the biggest names in the sport are set to battle it out for gold, including Daiki Hashimoto, Oka Shinnosuke, Zhang Boheng, Illia Kovtun, Fred Richard and Jake Jarman.

Kensley recently visited the US National Training Centre, where she caught up with the American team and coaching staff ahead of their trip to the Netherlands. We'll be hearing more from those interviews during today's show.

Neutral Deductions will also be bringing you coverage directly from Rotterdam, with Kensley joined by Sam Lindley throughout the championships.

To stay up to date with all the action, make sure you're following Neutral Deductions across social media and subscribe to their YouTube channel.

And don't forget, every episode of the Sam Oldham Podcast is available to watch or listen to on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

 Our mission remains the same: to share the stories behind the finest athletes in gymnastics and celebrate the sport we love.

Thank you to our listeners, sponsors, and supporters for being part of the journey.

Welcome to Episode 9 of The Gymnastics Show! 🎙️

🇬🇷 At the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, Eleftherios Petrounias won gold for Greece in the still rings, achieving a dream that had begun twelve years earlier.

As a young boy, Eleftherios was in the arena at the Athens 2004 Olympics when fellow Greek gymnast Dimosthenis Tampakos won gold in front of his home crowd. Watching that moment firsthand showed him what was possible in the sport he loved.

But his own journey was far from straightforward. Eleftherios stepped away from gymnastics for several years before making the decision to return. Since then, he has gone on to become one of the greatest still rings specialists in the history of the sport.

At Paris 2024, he won bronze and became the first gymnast ever to win three individual Olympic medals on the still rings. Across his remarkable career, he has collected Olympic, World and European medals and built a legacy that continues to inspire athletes around the world.

And he’s not finished yet. With his sights now set on Los Angeles 2028, it’s a privilege to welcome to the podcast, Eleftherios Petrounias 🥇 

At the Athens 2004 Olympic Games, Naoya Tsukahara helped Japan’s men’s artistic gymnastics team win Olympic gold for the first time since 1976.

It was a victory that continued an extraordinary family legacy. Naoya’s father, Mitsuo Tsukahara, was part of the great Japanese dynasty that dominated men’s gymnastics, winning consecutive Olympic team titles in 1968, 1972 and 1976.

Naoya went on to build an incredible career of his own, winning six World Championship medals. After the disappointment of the Sydney 2000 Olympics, where he had arrived as one of the favourites following his all-around silver medal at the 1999 World Championships, he returned four years later to achieve Olympic glory in Athens. Along the way, he was coached by one of the legends of the sport, 15-time Olympic medallist Nikolai Andrianov.

The final chapter of Naoya’s competitive career took him to Australia, the country he would eventually represent before retiring from gymnastics in 2016.

For this episode, we’re joined by Naoya alongside Hiroaki Sato, his former personal coach during his time in Australia, who will also act as Naoya’s translator throughout our conversation.

Hiroaki has an incredible coaching story of his own, having worked with the legendary Kohei Uchimura and coached Japan’s men’s team at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, where they won team gold.

Together, we’ll look back on Naoya’s remarkable career, his journey to Olympic gold, and the Tsukahara family legacy that continues to inspire generations of gymnasts around the world.

This is the story of Olympic champion Naoya Tsukahara 🥇 

Today’s guest is Dutch men’s artistic gymnast, Bart Deurloo.

At the 2017 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Montreal, Canada, Bart Deurloo won bronze on the horizontal bar for the Netherlands, sharing the podium with his teammate and Olympic champion, Epke Zonderland.

Over a professional career spanning sixteen years, Bart represented the Dutch men’s gymnastics team at two Olympic Games. At Rio 2016, he made history by becoming the first Dutch male artistic gymnast to qualify for the Olympic all-around final, where he finished 15th.

Four years later, at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, Bart qualified for the horizontal bar final, finishing seventh. Throughout his career, he has continued to push the boundaries of what’s possible on his specialist apparatus.

This is the story of Bart Deurloo.

With just one month to go until the 2026 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Rotterdam, the Five-Way International in Stoke provided one final opportunity for athletes to impress ahead of team selections.

The competition brought together teams from Great Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, with both men’s and women’s artistic gymnastics taking place at Fenton Manor Sports Complex.

On the men’s side, British stars Jake Jarman, Luke Whitehouse and Courtney Tulloch helped Great Britain take the gold medal.

For Jarman, this was an especially important competition. After missing the European Championships and Commonwealth Games, Stoke offered him a valuable opportunity to hit the selection scores needed ahead of the World Championships team announcement later this month.

Whitehouse and Tulloch also competed on some of their less-favoured apparatus, perhaps giving us an indication of their strategy as we move further into the LA 2028 Olympic cycle.

Sol Scott and Jonas Rushworth, fresh from winning European team gold with Great Britain, delivered solid performances across the competition. But one of the standout performances came from Oakley Banks, who broke the 80-point mark for the first time in his career and finished top of the all-around standings.

Ultimately, Great Britain proved too strong for the other nations, many of whom fielded younger athletes hoping to use this competition as a springboard for the years ahead.

Elsewhere, France’s Anthony Mansard made his return to competition following an injury that had kept him out so far this year. Italy finished second, narrowly ahead of France in third, with Switzerland fourth and Germany fifth.

In this episode, we’ll take a closer look at the competition, the standout performances and what it could all mean as attention turns towards the World Championships in Rotterdam.

And finally, a big thank you to the British Gymnastics media team for allowing us to cover the international event in Stoke.

Today’s guest is British men’s artistic gymnastics coach, Joshua Champion.

Josh is the head coach of the men’s artistic programme at Notts Gymnastics Academy, where he works with some of the country’s top gymnasts.

This summer, Josh was part of the coaching team that helped England win silver in the men’s team final at the Commonwealth Games, with the team featuring two of his own gymnasts, Adam Tobin and Alex Yolshin-Cash. Another of Josh’s athletes, Hamish Carter, was also in Glasgow competing for Team Scotland.

In August, Josh was back on the competition floor with Great Britain, supporting the talented junior men’s team as they claimed back-to-back European team titles. His gymnast Zakaine Fawzi also enjoyed individual success, winning European silver on pommel horse alongside the team gold.

In this episode, we talk about Josh’s journey as a coach, the challenges facing men’s artistic gymnastics coaching, and the financial pressures facing the athletes and coaches working at the highest level of the sport.

This is the story of Josh Champion.

🥇 In 2026, we're launching a brand-new monthly gymnastics show on The Sam Oldham Podcast. Each month, we'll explore the biggest names, emerging storylines, and major championship build-ups in artistic gymnastics, alongside post-competition debriefs with some of the sport's most passionate experts, coaches, and analysts.

In this episode, I look back at the Men’s European Artistic Gymnastics Championships, which took place in Zagreb, Croatia, in August.

The men’s all-around final was won by Illia Kovtun, now representing the host nation, Croatia, by just one thousandth of a point. That incredibly small margin of victory was repeated in the junior event, where Daniil Smirnov, competing as a Russian athlete for Team World Gymnastics 2, took the title—demonstrating just how competitive the sport has become since the reduction to eight skills following the Paris Olympic Games.

In the team event, the Russian athletes dominated qualification, led by first-year senior Arsenii Dukhno and Daniil Marinov. However, an outstanding performance from Great Britain saw them claim the team title in Sunday’s final. The experience of Joe Fraser, Courtney Tulloch and Harry Hepworth proved to be the deciding factor in one of the most exciting competitions on the European stage in recent years.

All six individual apparatus finals were won by athletes from different countries, including a world-class pommel horse final that was eventually won by Gabriele Targhetta. Remarkably, the top four scores in that final would each have been enough to win the World Championships title less than twelve months ago—an indication of the extraordinary standard we might expect to see in October, when the world’s best gymnasts descend on Rotterdam.

Our mission remains the same: to share the stories behind the finest athletes in gymnastics and celebrate the sport we love.

Thank you to our listeners, sponsors, and supporters for being part of the journey.

Welcome to Episode 8 of The Gymnastics Show! 🎙️

Today’s guest is Australian tumbling champion Ethan McGuinness.

Ethan is a two-time men’s individual World tumbling champion, winning his first World title in 2022 and bringing the gold medal home to Australia again in 2025.

But his journey to the top has been anything but easy. In 2017, Ethan suffered a devastating injury, fracturing both his tibia and fibula in a freak accident while competing in the double mini trampoline event.

After years of hard work and dedication, he returned to become a World champion alongside his coach, Dima Kachan. At one point, Ethan was even working full-time laying turf in the early hours of the morning while chasing his dream of becoming a professional athlete.

Today, through events like Face Off and his growing social media presence, Ethan has helped shine a light on the incredible talent within the sport of tumbling.

This is the story of Ethan McGuinness.

🥇 In 2026, we're launching a brand-new monthly gymnastics show on The Sam Oldham Podcast. Each month, we'll explore the biggest names, emerging storylines, and major championship build-ups in artistic gymnastics, alongside post-competition debriefs with some of the sport's most passionate experts, coaches, and analysts.

In this episode of the Sam Oldham Podcast, I’m joined by Kensley Behel, the talented voice behind Neutral Deductions — a podcast, website and social media platform dedicated to men’s artistic gymnastics.

Together, we recap the Commonwealth Games and discuss some of the standout performances, including all-around champion Reuben Ward, multiple Canadian apparatus gold medallist Félix Dolci, and Australian star Jesse Moore.

Kensley also breaks down the recent US National Championships in Phoenix, Arizona, which doubled as the selection event for the US men’s World Championships team. We look at the leading all-around performances from champion Fred Richard, silver medallist Shane Wiskus and exciting young talent Danila Leykin, who finished third. We also discuss strong specialist performances from Kameron Nelson and Patrick Hoopes, which secured their places on the team heading to Rotterdam in October.

Finally, we preview the upcoming European Championships in Zagreb, Croatia. Great Britain will be looking to defend their 2025 team title, while the competition will feature the return of a Russian men’s team to the European stage after several years away.

The all-around title promises to be fiercely contested, with Joe Fraser, Arsenii Dukhno, Illia Kovtun and former champion Adem Asil among the leading contenders. Meanwhile, some of the biggest names in the sport will battle for individual apparatus titles, including Harry Hepworth, Eleftherios Petronias , Rhys McClenaghan and Artur Davtyan.

Our mission remains the same: to share the stories behind the finest athletes in gymnastics and celebrate the sport we love.

Thank you to our listeners, sponsors, and supporters for being part of the journey.

Welcome to Episode 7 of The Gymnastics Show! 🎙️

At the 2025 European Artistic Gymnastics Championships, Jonas Rushworth helped the British men’s team claim gold. It was his first major championships, and Jonas made an immediate impression, competing across multiple apparatus and establishing himself as an important member of the team.

Now, just a year later, he’s been selected again to represent Great Britain at this year’s European Championships in Croatia.

And 2026 has already been a breakthrough year for Jonas. He’s been crowned English All-Around Champion and, at the British Championships in March, finished runner-up to Olympian and World Parallel bars Champion Joe Fraser.

Training at Leeds Gymnastics Club alongside Olympic vault medallist Harry Hepworth and World Floor Exercise medallist Luke Whitehouse, Jonas is surrounded by athletes who have already reached the highest levels of the sport.

With LA 2028 firmly in his sights, he’s hoping to follow in their footsteps and establish himself among the next generation of British gymnastics stars.

This is Jonas Rushworth’s story.