Olympic hopes for Corby gymnast

Daniel Keating from Corby's hoping to make it onto the British gymnastics team for the Olympics after becoming the first British man to win GOLD at a major gymnastics championship at the weekend.

20 year old Daniel topped the podium in the pommel horse at the European Gymnastics Championships in Birmingham on Sunday.

After winning silver in the all-around at the 2009 World Championships, he scored 15.600 to push Olympic pommel bronze medallist, and close friend, Louis Smith into silver.

Daniel's hoping his performance will help get him on the British team at London 2012. He says:

"Olympics is the dream you know...the main one. I just have to take each competition as they come and take each one at a time, the Europeans, the World Championships and try and achieve at them first and then hopefully do something at the Olympics.

I think there's definitely potential to do something there. I mean from my performances in the past, winning Silver at the World Championships, the Gold at the Europeans, there is definitely potential but I've still got a lot of work to do. I'm nowhere near my peak yet so I've got to get back in the gym, working hard and looking forward to the Olympics."

Daniel also says he hopes his performance will inspire other boys in Northamptonshire to take up the sport...

"Its such an amazing sport. Its for the adrenaline junkies. There's a big adrenaline rush when you're flipping and then you're on the bar trying to flip again. It's scary but it's also really fun as well so I'd encourage anyone to do it.

It's not a very publicised sport and not many people see it as a popular sport. Hopefully it'll raise the awareness of gymnastics now you know we're starting to achieve a lot more things so hopefully there'll be a lot more people watching that."