Max Whitlock and Gabby Jupp win GB Gymnastics titles

Double Olympic medallist Max Whitlock ended Great Britain team-mate Daniel Purvis's reign as national champion with a superb win in Liverpool.

Whitlock, who won team and pommel horse bronze at London 2012, finished more than three points clear of Purvis with an all-around score of 90.650.

Sam Oldham, another member of the team that won a historic Olympic bronze, was edged out of third by Matthew Firth.

Gabby Jupp, appearing in her first major senior event, took women's gold.

The 15-year-old succeeded Olympian Rebecca Tunney, who was unable to defend her national crown because of injury.

English champion Hannah Whelan finished well adrift of the podium in eighth place after twice falling on the bars. Charlie Fellows claimed silver and Niamh Rippin took bronze.

Kristian Thomas and Louis Smith, who together with Whitlock, Purvis and Oldham, won Britain's first Olympic team medal in more than a century at London 2012 were both absent from the men's competition.

Thomas suffered an injury in the recent World Cup event in France while Smith is taking time away from the sport to concentrate on other projects.

It gave Whitlock the chance to shine and he beat Purvis on five of the six pieces of apparatus, with the defending champion superior only on the rings, where a double-double finish secured an impressive 14.900.

Daniel Keatings, who narrowly missed out on a place in the Olympic team after failing to recover from a career-threatening knee injury, beat Whitlock to the highest pommel horse score of the day, with his mark of 15.800 proving 0.100 better than the all-around champion's effort.

Keatings also took gold in the high bar and parallel bars - the only other two apparatus he took part in - proving he his nearing peak condition once more.

But Whitlock, whose victory all but secured his place in the Great Britain squad for next month's European Championships, is delighted with his form.

"To start the year by winning the English title, which has always been one of my main ambitions, and then to win the British is just crazy," he said.

"The pommel will always be my strongest piece, but I wanted to go out and show I can do all-around and hopefully that will give me a chance of perhaps doing it again at the Europeans or Worlds this year."

Lisa Mason, who has returned to competitive gymnastics after a 13-year absence in an attempt to qualify for next year's Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, qualified for tomorrow's vault final with a score of 13.425.

The 31-year-old, who represented Great Britain at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, won the English vault title in her comeback event earlier this month.

The individual apparatus finals will be the last chance for athletes to impress selectors before next month's European Championships in Moscow.

The squad will be revealed next week with Britain expected to name ten athletes - six men and four women - in the team.