THE Seychelles Gymnastics Association closes its 2002 calendar with the National Championship, due to take place on December 14 at the Roche Caïman Omnisports Gym.

Organisers hope that this end of season event will feature all of the usual faces from Seychelles gymnastics, as well as provide a forum for new athletes to emerge and with this in mind the event is being organised at three levels of ability, beginners, novice and advanced.

The scoring procedure, to be used at the event, will allow the judges to employ their discretion in awarding points to the participants. There will be a maximum of eight points available, for each discipline, in the beginners and novice categories and an upper limit of 10 points in the advanced category.

The competition, open to male and female competitors, will comprise floor, vaulting box or lamb disciplines at the beginners level; floor, vault or vaulting box for the novices.

The male and female events differ slightly at the advanced level, both featuring the floor and vault disciplines, but with the men’s competition also including the parallel bar and the pommel horse.

After completing each of their chosen disciplines, the athletes' points will be added together to give their total for the tournament, the winner being the gymnast with the highest score.

An added incentive for all of those taking part is that the ranking that they achieve at the end of the competition will be converted into points for the yearly classification table,  meaning that the current standings could be altered.