Alice Kinsella just wants to have fun after a tough Paris build-up
Having helped make history on Olympic debut three years ago, Alice Kinsella’s target above all others heading into her second Games is simply to have some fun.
For several months last year, gymnastics was a long way from that.
So bad did it get that at one stage Kinsella, the Tokyo 2020 bronze medallist and mainstay of the GB team for several years, considered calling it a day for good.
Having begun taking the contraceptive pill as treatment for acne, Kinsella developed anxiety and depression.
“It was like my body had forgotten how to do everything,” the Park Wrekin star recently explained.
Gymnastic skills which had been second nature since childhood suddenly became impossible.
“I’d go into pretty much every single piece thinking: ‘I don’t really know what’s going to happen’,” she explains.
“I started to struggle really bad mentally, to the point I was probably going to give up.”
Following conversations between Kinsella, her coaches Christine Still and Brett Ince and her mother Karen it was decided she should stop taking the pill and gradually her confidence returned.
