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Active Tasmania

Kellie Louise Larter

Member 2002 - Born 20 September 1969

As an 11 year old in 1980, Kellie represented the Launceston Police and Citizens Youth club at the state championships and won her first level 8 state title. This was the start of a stellar career for this outstanding young gymnast.

In 1984 she became the first Tasmanian to be accepted in to the Australian Institute of Sport gymnastic scholarship programme. In the same year, she was selected to represent the Institute in the first of a number of international competitions which were to follow. This was in New Zealand where she won two gold and a silver medal.

As well, for 1984, Kellie was voted as Gymnast of the year at the Australian Institute of Sport. Selected for the Australian team for the Commonwealth Championships in Glasgow in August of 1986, Kellie won an individual silver medal on the beam, being the only Australian woman to win a medal at those titles and also creating Tasmanian gymnastic history as our first international medallist.

1987 was a particularly outstanding year when she competed in the World Gymnastics Championships and received a F.I.G. Gold Pin for averaging above 90% on all apparatus. She was also the overall Australian champion at the national titles and an individual gold medallist on the bars and a silver one on the beam. Again she was the A.I.S. Gymnast of the Year.

With these excellent results it was no surprise that Kellie won both the T.V.T. 6 Sports Star Award and Mercury Stars of Sport Award.

Kellie again represented her country in the Konica Cup in Moscow in July 1988 and was named as a non travelling reserve for the Seoul Olympic Games of that year. The existing quota system allowed only two Australian gymnasts to compete then in those Games.

Kellie is the first gymnast to be inducted into the Tasmanian Hall of Fame. Her achievements were excellent but very importantly for her sport she served as an exceptional role model for the younger gymnasts who saw her as a very modest but brilliant young talent to whom they could aspire to emulate.