THE distinctive beat of ska-style music resonates around the arena at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow. Out on the floor Claudia Fragapane spins and somersaults across the floor like a whirling dervish.
It was these show-stopping skills which saw the 17-year-old British gymnast make history last summer by becoming the first Englishwoman in 84 years to win four gold medals at a single Commonwealth Games.
She is part of a Great Britain women's side of some calibre that will compete at the 2015 World Gymnastics Championships in Glasgow later this week.
The six-strong team also includes Becky and Ellie Downie, Kelly Simm, Ruby Harrold and Amy Tinkler.
At 23, Becky Downie is the veteran of the team, a reigning double Commonwealth Games gold medallist and former European champion, set to compete at her seventh world championships.
Younger sister, Ellie, 16, carved her own slice of history by becoming the first female gymnast to win an individual all-around medal for Great Britain at the European Championships with a bronze in April. Together the siblings are nicknamed "Double Downie" among their fans.
Harrold, 19, and Simm, 20, were part of the England team that became Commonwealth Games champions at Glasgow 2014, while Tinkler – the baby of the team at 15 – is in her first year as a senior gymnast, but already proving her mettle by taking the British all-around title earlier this year.
They will get their campaign officially underway on Friday when qualification begins. While the quest for individual glory will come later, the major priority for the Great Britain contingent is a top eight team placing in order to qualify for a spot at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.
During podium training on Monday, the sextet – and alternate Charlie Fellows – looked in stellar form.
Although there was a couple of hiccups – Fragapane sat down on one of her floor tumbling passes while Becky Downie had uncharacteristic slip on asymmetric bars – they remained cheerily philosophical.
"This arena set-up is quite different compared to other championships, so it has been good to get out there and see what the lighting and equipment is like – get any of those errors out the way," said Downie.
"I usually do a slightly different warm-up in competition, but today coming out, touching new bars, it is your first try [on the equipment]," she added. "The skill I had the mistake on, it is a big skill to go cold into on a brand new bar. I'm pretty confident that will work on Friday.
"I don't think I have ever done that on bars before, where I pinged off and landed on my bum on the floor. It was a bit of shock to the system. I just caught the bottom bar slightly wrong and pinged off. It is one of those things in gymnastics – a silly mistake – and better now than in competition."
The coming days, said Downie, will be spent fine tuning their routines. "We are the home country so we know that pressure is on a little bit," she added. "We just need to go back into the gym, iron out those mistakes and come in confident for Friday."
Bubbly "pocket rocket" Fragapane turns 18 on Saturday. Enquiring whether she might indulge in a celebratory tipple prompted much raucous laughter among her team-mates.
"Yeah, I might have a bit," she joked, before hastily clarifying that marking her milestone birthday would be firmly on ice until after the championships have concluded.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here