Beth Tweddle

Beth Tweddle is an English former Olympic and World Champion artistic gymnast whose 18-year competitive career produced one Olympic bronze medal (2012 London Summer Olympics, uneven bars) and three World Artistic Gymnastics Championships gold medals (2006, 2009, 2010 — across the uneven bars and the floor exercise events) — making her the first British female gymnast ever to win a World Artistic Gymnastics Championship gold medal. She was born Elizabeth Kimberly Tweddle on April 1, 1985, in Johannesburg, South Africa, into an English-emigrant family. Her father Jerry Tweddle was an English-emigrant business-executive who had emigrated from England in the 1970s, and her mother Ann Tweddle was an English-emigrant homemaker. The 1987 family return to Bunbury, Cheshire, England (when Beth was two) launched her early-career path.

Her early-career English gymnastics-academy training at the City of Liverpool Gymnastics Club under coach Amanda Reddin (since age seven, in 1992) launched her late-1990s and 2000s English Olympic-gymnastics public profile.

Her 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games gold-medal-team performance and her subsequent 2003 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships uneven-bars silver-medal performance launched her mid-2000s English-and-international Olympic-gymnastics public profile. Her 2006 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships uneven-bars gold-medal performance in Aarhus, Denmark — at age 21 — produced her status as the first British female gymnast ever to win a World Artistic Gymnastics Championship gold medal.

Her subsequent 2009 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships uneven-bars gold-medal performance in London (at age 24) and her 2010 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships floor-exercise gold-medal performance in Rotterdam (at age 25) produced her international Olympic-gymnastics public profile. Her 2012 London Summer Olympics uneven-bars bronze-medal performance — at age 27 — produced her later international Olympic-gymnastics public profile. She retired from competitive gymnastics in 2013 at age 28. Her January 4, 2016 spinal-cord injury (during a celebrity ski-jumping competition for the British TV reality-show The Jump) shaped her late-career biographical narrative. She has been with English personal-trainer Andy Allen since 2018 (married 2019), and the couple has two children.

Her name Beth is the English short form of Elizabeth (from the Hebrew Elisheva meaning "my God is my oath"). Beth was a popular American girls' name through the mid-20th century.