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Born on the 20th of April 1991, Marissa king would have an 8 year wait before she even set foot in a gym! Starting out at South Cambridge Gym Club, Marissa was clearly a gymnast with great strength, and promise. It was not until 3 years later however, that Marissa moved to her current club Huntingdon under the guidance of George Blaj.
Over the years Marissa has developed into a well presented and powerful gymnast, competing at the British championships as an espoir, junior and will this year make her senior debut. It has been many years of hard work, but over the last few years Marissa's steady progression up the ranks is a true testament to the value of hard work. In 2005 at the British junior championships, Marissa placed 7th all around and 7th in her only event final on beam. Only one year later however, she had made a fantastic leap to placing 4th all around and qualifying to all four event finals, and even coming second on beam!
Despite having not been developed as a junior international gymnast she has shown an outstanding level of determination and perseverance and is now reaping the rewards. After competing for Huntingdon in the recent British team championships, helping them place third as a team and individually placing 3rd all around, Marissa was selected to represent Great Britain at the 2007 European Championships. This was her first major international competition and although there were slight bobbles on some apparatus, she qualified to the vault finals to reach an outstanding 6th position which she believes to be her finest gymnastic achievement to date!
An ambitious gymnast, Marissa hopes to represent Great Britain in both the forthcoming world championships and the Olympics in Beijing. She lists her favourite apparatus as beam and vault and believes her best skills to be a standing Arabian on beam and the 1 ½ twisting tsuchahara that has enabled her to achieve such vaulting success! She also thinks that to be a great gymnast you need great determination and self-motivation, and feels that it is her determination which has lead her to such fantastic results.
However, it's not only in the gym where Marissa has such great ambition, at school she enjoys science classes the most and hopes to go on to further education and travel the world. When she's not in the gym or at school, Marissa enjoys gong out with her friends, shopping and generally relaxing.
Marissa is a down to earth girl with very admirable qualities and can certainly help team GB with the scores she can put up in major competition; we would like to wish her the best of luck in achieving all of her goals for the future representing both her club and country.
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