South Africa’s golden girl
Mmamule will be leaving for Belgium in October.
Mmamule Rankoe is a fifteen-year-old artistic gymnast who is taking the gymnastics world by storm. This Hoërskool Die Burger pupil and Roodepoort resident started gymnastics at the age of eight with JGC gymnastics club. Mmamule has been performing outstandingly in gymnastics to the extent that it was mandatory for her to leap from level one to level six (high performance) in 2009 when she joined. Today, Mmamule proudly drapes about 50 medals around her tiny neck. These are some of Mmamule’s accomplishments:
· October 2009 – Her first international competition. Held at the Rosebowl in England, the team came third overall
· February 2012 – At pre-junior level she attended a training camp in Australia with the Western Australian Institution of sport (WAIS)
· April 2012 – Competed on two apparatus at the African Championships in Tunisia
· January 2013 – Competed in the Dream Light Perth International Gymnastic Challenge in Australia and came fourth on bars
· June 2013 – Competed at the South African National Junior Olympic gymnastic championships in Pinetown near Durban and came first overall
· December 2013 – Competed in the Memorial tournament in Laza Krstic and Marica Dželatovic Novi Sad 2013 in Serbia and came second overall
· April 2014 – Competed at the African Championships at the University of Pretoria against the likes of Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. She came first on bars, third on beam and second overall. With this achievement she qualified compete in the Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China
· June 2014 – Competed in the United States Association of Independent Gymnastics Clubs World Championships (USAIGC) in the USA, achieving first place all around, first on bars, second on beam, third on vault and forth on floor
· August 2014 – Competed at Nanjing, China, where 42 gymnasts represented five continents. Rankoe came 16th on bars and 33rd overall. She will be leaving for Belgium in October to compete in the Top Gym competition.
Mmamule trains from Mondays to Saturdays for five hours a day. This is her last year as junior-level competitor as she will be turning 16 next year and moving to senior level.
“Her stress is my stress. I always make sure that she does her best and not fall behind with her school work. I also make sure she takes her school books with every time she competes internationally,” says proud mother Modiegi Rankoe.
