McLachlan towers over fellow gymnasts

The stakes might be higher for Calista McLachlan when she competes at Gymnastics Manitoba’s provincial artistic championships on Sunday, but the unflappable teenager will be treating it like just another day at the gym.

“It might be a little more tense,” said McLachlan, a 16-year-old Grade 11 student at Crocus Plains. “I don’t get super nervous before competitions. They all just seem the same.”

She competes during a three-hour span on Sunday morning at the event at Elites Gymnastics in Sunnyside, just east of Winnipeg. The event, which includes a healthy contingent of Brandon Eagles club members and began Thursday, continues until Sunday, with three more days of competition next weekend.

In women’s artistic gymnastics, the athletes compete on the balance beam, vault, uneven bars and floor exercise, with their combined score crowning a champion.

This is McLachlan’s fourth year in competitive gymnastics, and the 2009-born athlete has attended provincials every time. She was third in 2023, fourth in 2024 and won her event competing against other 2009- and 2010-born gymnasts in 2025.

“It was cool but there are not a ton of people who are in my age category,” McLachlan said.

In a field of nine a year ago in Swan River, McLachlan was fifth in vault with a score of 8.775, first in uneven bars at 9.500, first on beam at 9.275 and second in floor 9.250 for a score of 36.800. She edged out her club mate Leyla Kamali, who finished with a 36.350, to win gold.

While McLachlan enjoyed success last year, she’s not putting too much pressure on herself to repeat this time around.

“I just go and have fun and see what happens,” McLachlan said. She was active in a number of sports growing up, including volleyball, hockey, soccer, track and swimming. She didn’t know anybody in the Brandon Eagles when she joined the gymnastics club, “We had a trampoline and I enjoyed using it,” McLachlan said. “After COVID, I had to pick between hockey and gymnastics so I picked gymnastics.”

She said her strengths are mainly beam but also floor. While she’s enjoyed tremendous success during her gymnastics career, she did it despite a pair of hurdles most of her club mates and competitors don’t face.

“I started really late,” McLachlan said. “I was 11, so I did a year before I was in competitive. Over the last two years, I’ve really got a lot of new skills.”

The other challenge is her lanky frame.

“I’m taller than every person, including the coaches,” she quipped.

A pair of well-known American gymnastics superstars are well under five feet — Simone Biles is four-foot-eight and Mary Lou Retton is four-foot-nine — and Romania’s Nadia Comaneci was just over five-foot-three.

“It does change a little bit because I’m five-11.5, almost six feet, so it’s mostly just bars,” McLachlan said. “In the last few years I’ve been able to raise the bars so it’s better.”

The tallest gymnast to win an Olympic medal was five-foot-11 Kateryna Serebrianska of Ukraine, who captured gold in individual all-around in rhythmic gymnastics in 1996 in Atlanta.

The tallest artistic gymnast to attend the Olympics was Germany’s Marie-Sophie Hindermann, who competed in all-around, floor, uneven bars and beam in 2008, but didn’t medal.

It certainly doesn’t hurt that McLachlan is simply a terrific athlete.

Last year at the city track meet, she won discus, shotput and high jump, but wasn’t able to compete at provincials because smoke shut the meet down in Winnipeg.

This year she will compete for Crocus in discus and triple jump and is still deciding on her third event, which will likely either be high jump or shotput.

She’s happy she’ll be able to lean on her gymnastics training in her other sports.

“I think it helps with track for sure,” McLachlan said. “Gymnastics has a lot of everything, so with jumping and throwing and I have done running in track, and it’s helped with most parts of that.”

pbergson@brandonsun.com