Ruby Evans wins Glasgow floor gold for Wales at 2026 Commonwealth Games
Ruby Evans won a historic floor gold for Wales at the Glasgow stage of the 2026 Commonwealth Games on Tuesday. The 19-year-old, who competed for Great Britain at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games as a 17-year-old, has since attracted 127,000 Instagram followers and almost two million likes on TikTok.
Evans said she did not appreciate the scale of what she was about to do in the summer of 2024 and that competing at Paris had catapulted her into the spotlight. "I didn't actually think I'd get that many followers after the Olympics," she told BBC Sport. "Because I was so young, I'd never really watched an Olympics. I didn't actually realise how many people watched the Olympics."
She recalled the immediate reaction after Paris: "I remember just opening my phone [after competing] and it wouldn't even turn on, there was just so much going on." Success at Glasgow required resilience; Evans left the arena in tears after finishing sixth in the individual all-around on Sunday and then returned on Tuesday to win the floor final.
After the floor victory Evans said she had channelled anger into motivation, describing her performance by saying her "dragon was absolutely firing" for the gold-medal routine. The arena scenes contrasted her Sunday disappointment with the podium result two days later.
Evans is no stranger to the negative side of social media but said she refuses to be affected by online abuse. "It doesn't matter who you are, you're going to get nasty comments," she said. "But if they're not doing anything better and they can only comment on other people's lives, then you're already winning."
She added: "I know some people will get offended by it and that's obviously OK. I just say never show the person that you're offended because they're going to keep doing it. "It's like bullies at school."
On the competition record front, Evans and her team-mates finished fourth, 0.2 points shy of a medal, in the women's team final at the Paris Olympics, and she won silver in the floor event at the 2025 World Championships. After her Glasgow gold she said she is aiming for more success at this week's European Championships in Zagreb, Croatia, which will be shown live on the BBC from Saturday.
Evans said medals are not her primary driver and that improving as a gymnast is her biggest motivation. Asked if she was targeting gold at the LA 2028 Olympics she smiled: "Maybe," she added. "If I'm good." For individual Olympic success she will need to perform two vaults with different entries, a current focus in training: "Maybe if I get a second vault, I'd have quite a good chance," she said. "But it's in gear two. It needs to get to gear five."
At the European Championships, Evans and her team are concentrating on a strong showing in Sunday's women's team final because it will set them up for October's World Championships and, with it, a chance of Olympic qualification. The women's event at the 2026 European Artistic Gymnastics Championships runs 13-16 August, with the men's event 19-23 August.