Year 12’s Reece Cobb — NZ’s top female gymnast — is poised to achieve her lifelong goal of competing at the 2024 Paris Olympics. A dream that has seen her train four hours a day, six days a week for the last five years.

Reece is NZ’s 2022 champion and the top female gymnast at the senior international level. She joined Aquinas in April after returning to the BOP from Wellington.

She recently represented NZ at the 2023 Oceania Champs in Australia in May where she finished second overall and was the top NZ placegetter.

The 16-year-old now has her sights on the World Championships in Belgium and the World Cup in Paris this Spring. (She was one of just two NZers to qualify.)

The European contests are qualifiers for the 2024 Olympics. To secure a spot in the NZ team, Reece needs to finish in the top 50 places.

It’s a goal she’s trained years for. A gymnast since the age of five, Reece trains

six days a week for four hours a day at Impact Gymsport Academy. From 4.00 pm to 8.00 pm she trains then heads home for dinner and homework. Sunday is her only day off. She’s been doing this for the last five years.

The rigorous training commitments mean she’s missed hanging out with friends, as well as her family’s last four overseas holidays. But she likes the challenge gymnastics brings as well as the sacrifices and hopes to inspire others.

Reece’s favourite apparatus are vault, bar, beam and floor. Her gymnastics prowess took her to the World Cup in Germany and Doha last year, and the World Championships in Liverpool.

Best of luck this Spring Reece. Your Aquinas whānau is with you all the way!