World Gymnastics Championships 2022: GB's medal hopefuls

The World Gymnastics Championships begin this weekend, with more than 400 athletes from across the globe arriving in the host city of Liverpool.

As a qualifying event for the next Olympics, some of the greatest gymnasts will go head to head over nine days.

With 72 medals across 14 events up for grabs, the 51st world championships is sure to be action packed.

Coverage of the competition will be LIVE on the BBC.

Get set for the Olympics... in 2024

The World Championships in Liverpool are the first opportunity for athletes across a range of apparatus to qualify for the next Olympic Games in 2024.

That means this competition matters if they want to compete in Paris.

More than 100 judges will be on hand to score the very best routines of 441 gymnasts across over 2000 individual routines and performances.

That's a lot of action to get through! The top three highest ranked teams in the team final will automatically qualify a full team of five gymnasts to the Games.

So what has Team GB got to offer at these championships? Let's take a closer look at who to watch out for.

'I'm massively excited for it'

Fresh from winning team silver at the European Championships in Munich, GB have named an unchanged women's team.

Seventeen-year-old twin sisters Jessica and Jennifer Gadirova join Alice Kinsella, Ondine Achampong and Georgia-Mae Fenton.

Great Britain's Jennifer Gadirova, Georgia-Mae Fenton, Alice Kinsella, Ondine Achampong and Jessica Gadirova won team silver at the European Championships in Munich in August

Kinsella, who won Commonwealth Games individual floor gold this summer said: "It's an absolute honour to have been selected for this year's world championships, especially with it being in Liverpool.

"This will be my fourth world championships now so I'm massively excited for it."

The Gadirova sisters, along with Kinsella, won Olympic bronze last year, so they're strong contenders for medals at these championships along with Achampong and Fenton who medalled at the recent Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.

'We know the atmosphere will be electric'

The men's artistic team won gold at this year's European Championships AND Commonwealth Games and go into Liverpool unchanged.

James Hall, Joe Fraser, Jake Jarman, Courtney Tulloch and Giarnni Regini-Moran go into this competition full of confidence and cannot wait to experience the atmosphere of a world championships staged in Britain.

"Being part of this team is very special and after two major championships back to back, going into this world championships together feels like a big moment," said Jarman.

"We know the atmosphere will be electric and how much that support is going to drive us all on."

One big name GB gymnast who will not be there is Max Whitlock, who hasn't competed since he won his third gold medal at the Olympics in Tokyo last summer.

Whitlock has won three pommel horse titles and is the floor exercise champ, taking gold in Rio 2016, but he has taken an extended break from the sport.

Despite missing these championships, it's not too late for him to qualify for the Olympics in Paris as there will be other events where he can still compete.