Torquay Allstars off to worlds

Justine Bratanavicius from Aerosport Allstars Grovedale is taking six girls from the club to compete at October's FISAF World Championships in the Netherlands. Five of the girls are from Torquay (Justine far left, is pictured here at the 2016 Worlds in Vienna, where she was Australia’s team coach).

OF SIX girls from Aerosport Allstars Grovedale who qualified to compete in this year’s Fitness and Sports Aerobics World Championships in Leiden, the Netherlands, five are from Torquay.

Coach Justine Bratanavicius said it reflected the success the club has had so far this year with 41 out of 45 Aerosport Allstars qualifying for the National Championships back in April.

“Then we had seven athletes try out for the World Championships held overseas in October and of them, six have qualified – five being from Torquay,” she said.

“We’ve got three duos – one senior pair and two juniors. They’ll perform a two-minute routine which reflects strength, flexibility, fitness, coordination and synchronisation as a pair.

“We’ll be competing against countries like Italy, France, Germany, Russia and the Czech Republic.”

Justine said they’ve previously competed in the worlds and had medalled but were looking forward to the opportunity to bring home gold.

“We haven’t brought home gold for a while so we’re really chasing that this year. The senior pair are really focused they’re training so hard to get on the podium,” she said.

“The girls are doing up to 12-16 hours a week and putting the hard yards in. The National Championships went over four days in Brisbane and the world’s will go for five days.

“Parents come along and we do fundraise beforehand as there’s quite a large overhead for expenses. As a club we’re large for a rural area, we run Aerosport Gymnastics and have 600 kids going through the centre.”