Bev Smith has joined Welsh Gymnastics as the interim chief executive officer following Rhian Gibson’s departure.
Many of you may already know Bev and her background, as she has been an independent director on the Welsh Gymnastics board for many years, but for those of you who don’t, Welsh Gymnastics caught up with her to find out more.
Bev has gymnastics in her DNA, having started her sporting career as an artistic gymnast at Cardiff Olympic Gymnastics, she went on to compete for Wales and Great Britain, before moving on to coach with Wales and assist with the GB artistic gymnastics team in London, while at University.
At the end of her competitive career she returned to Cardiff to teach PE, and won a fellowship to study gymnastics coaching in Russia and the US. This increased her development as a national coach and she went on to carry out three cycles as an international brevet judge.
Bev moved on to become the Technical Director for Welsh Gymnastics, and then onto become a sports development officer at Cardiff council and this is where she learnt how much of a difference sport can make to local communities and decided to pursue this in the rest of her career.
She then moved onto working in higher education, at Cardiff Metropolitan University, where she remained until she retired earlier this year as the Dean of Quality and Standards.
Bev said that the opportunity to take charge of Welsh Gymnastics for a short period at such an exciting time for our sport, was too good an opportunity to miss: “I have only been in post for two weeks, and my eyes have been opened to the great people we have working here at Welsh Gymnastics and the great community we have working hard for our sport.
“In the run up to the Commonwealth Games, we have a lot going on, it’s a very exciting time and so I am just here to steady the ship before we appoint a new CEO. “
Bev added: “I love the Welsh Gymnastics vision of “creating great communities and champions through gymnastics” and feel that our clubs are our reason for being. I want to work on a deliberate and targeted approach to further grow our communities in Wales.”
On the Commonwealth Games, Bev said: “We are in great shape for the games. I am really excited about it because we have all our readiness factors and it’s great to see that our sport is in such great hands with these young athletes. I can’t wait to see what they achieve.”