History

Debbie Richardson nee Hampton and Keith Richardson formed the Dynamo School of Gymnastics in 1986. At this time it was operating as “The Southampton School of Gymnastics” (S.S.G.) The Schools activities took place at Eastpoint Community Centre in Southampton. At Eastpoint there were two small multifunctional halls. Gymnastics shared these with football, badminton, basketball, athletics and a number of non-sporting functions such as exhibitions weddings and bird shows.

The needs of gymnastics are quite extensive in terms of specialised apparatus requirements. This apparatus was kept in a store and erected by the youngsters at the start of a training session and put away at the end. This constituted one-hour of the total hall hire time, which worked out very expensive, as the charge was the full rate for every 45min period. As can be imagined time and energy spent on putting kit out and in detracted from quality working time.

S.S.G. ran classes for male and female artistic, recreational, adult and pre-school gymnastics. It also had specialised classes for special needs male and female gymnastics at both recreational and competitive level and also for Trampolining. This special needs competitive section were very successful taking National titles at the British Championships. The male and female sections had gymnasts involved in county, regional and centre of excellence training squads. Gymnasts from the recreational groups attended the World Gymnastrada, festival of gymnastics in Amsterdam.

With the ever-increasing success of S.S.G. and the increase in the number of youngsters wishing to participate in the sport, it soon became impossible to operate in the facilities that Eastpoint had to offer. As a solution to this dilemma it was decided to take up a 10-year lease on a factory unit on the Solent Industrial Estate in Hedge End. Although the best solution at the time,, being in the Industrial Unit has not been without its problems. Being presented with a rent increase of 40% the school was unable to meet the costs of remaining in the building. As a short term solution the building was sold and the new landlord took over allowing the school to stay, but only for two years. The unit had to be vacated by September of 2002. For this reason Dynamo School of gymnastics started looking for an alternative venue to carry on its activities. A relationship was formed with Hamble School who were bidding to become a Specialist Sports College. After persistent attempts by Hamble School to achieve this status DSG launched a bid for Lottery funding to build a specialist Gymnastics Centre on the School sight. This was finally successful resulting in DSG making the Hamble School sight its home where it has gone from strength to strength.

During this time also the school had formed a close relationship with one of the top gymnastics clubs in the world, Moscow Dynamo.  This relationship resulted in the two clubs twinning with their President and Vice President Dr. Vladimir Zaglada and Michael Voronin becoming Vice Presidents of the Southampton club.  Michael Voronin was one of the most successful gymnasts from the Soviet gymnastics system with a host of Olympic and World titles to boast of. Dr. Zaglada is responsible for the rise to fame of the Moscow club in the former Soviet Union days and even recent times. He was also a professor at the world famous Moscow sports institute of physical culture. The two clubs embarked upon a program of co-operation, which lead to the exchange of gymnasts, coaches and technical expertise.  As a result of the twinning, the S.S.G. changed its name to the “Dynamo School of Gymnastics.”