Delhi2010 – Mitchell Wins All-Around Gold in Delhi

WAIS gymnast Lauren Mitchell has reinforced her status as Australia’s leading gymnast with a worldclass performance in claiming gold in last night’s individual All-Around final in Delhi.

Mitchell performed with style and grace to earn a total score of 58.200 across the four apparatus, with WAIS training partner Emily Little snaring silver to earn her best result of her short international career.

Australia’s dominance over the Commonwealth was confirmed with bronze going to Georgia Bonora, making it a clean sweep of the medals for the Australians.

Australia’s first rotation was held on vault, which saw Little – in her pet event – produce a stunning routine to score 14.850 to take the early lead. Mitchell however, reproduced the kind of form that saw her the fourth ranked gymnast in the world after last year’s world championships by performing top scoring routines on the un-even bars (13.900), balance beam (15.200) and floor (14.450).

With two gold medals in two days, Mitchell will compete in the individual apparatus finals for beam, bars and floor, with a realistic chance of returning five gold medals from these games, in the week leading up to the 2010 World Championships.

Following on from team gold a night earlier, where uncharacteristic struggles on the beam had tarnished an otherwise good team performance, the three Australian girls showed they had bounced back with each looked assured and confident during the individual beam rotation.

Mitchell will compete for her third gold this evening in the un-even bars final, before looking to complete her swag on Friday with the gold rounds for beam and floor to complete a busy week for the 19 year-old champion.