THE BASINGSTOKE senior mixed teamgym squad, recently crowned British champions, will be representing Great Britain in an international competition in France this weekend.

They have been invited to participate in the French open championships, Euroteam, in Montlucon and, as part of their community programme, Barclays Asset Finance have offered sponsorship for the team to travel.

The team were crowned British champions at the British Teamgym Championships in Poole in March to follow on from their unbeaten gold medal-winning run at county and regional competitions.

The team of David Davison, Teri Penny, Charlie Uezzell, Claire White, Claire Williams and David-Roy Wood, who are aged between 15 and 23, started the competition in a confident mood, scoring 7.75 for tumbling, which saw the team perform several new moves.

This was followed by 7.65 on the trampette with some solidly-landed twisting double somersaults.

Knowing that they needed 7.9 to secure the gold, the team put in an impressive and precise performance on the floor to score 8.2 and take the British title.

This was the senior mixed team's best performance to date, scoring 23.60 overall, improving on their previous best score by over a whole mark.

Following this weekend's international, the team hope to gain selection for the 2002 European championships for a return trip to France in November.

Meanwhile, the primary and junior girls competed in the first-ever National Tournament Cup.

The primary girls put in a solid performance on all three pieces of equipment to take silver medals with a score of 20.20.

This followed the silver medals won at the southern region championships and golds won at the Pinewood open.

The Basingstoke primary girls were Claire Hallett, Jo Jones, Gemma Donaldson, Natalie Bond, Michelle Christopher, Kathryn Dovey, Rohan Maynard and Laura Thurston.

The junior girls' section saw a strong field and Basingstoke had one of their best competitions to date, going clean on all three disciplines.

Rebecca Lane, Jessica Greer, Danielle Schuster, Georgina Gare, Rebecca O'Hearn, Kerry Ducker, Jennie Hopper and Charlotte le Flufy scored 21.90 to finish fourth, missing bronze by only 0.1.