Background and career
Jessica Gadirova (born 3 October 2004) is an English artistic gymnast of Irish birth and Azerbaijani descent, representing Great Britain internationally. She represented Great Britain at the 2020 Summer Olympics and won a bronze medal in the team event and was part of the silver medal-winning team at the 2022 World Championships and gold medal-winning team at the 2023 European Artistic Gymnastics Championships.
Individually, she is the 2022 World champion on floor exercise, the second British female and third Briton to win a World title on the apparatus (after Beth Tweddle and Giarnni Regini-Moran) as well as a three-time European champion on the same event (in 2021, 2022 and 2023). She is the first female gymnast to win three successive floor titles at the European Artistic Gymnastics Championships, and the first of either sex since Franco Menichelli (1941-2026) in 1965.
She is the 2023 European all-around champion, the second Briton after Ellie Downie to achieve that feat, and the 2022 World and 2021 European all-around bronze medallist. Additionally she is the 2021 European vault silver medallist. Gadirova became the first female gymnast to win three gold medals at the same European Championships since Cătălina Ponor for Romania in 2004, and the first to win the all-around title in doing so since Svetlana Khorkina for Russia in 2002.
She competed at the inaugural 2019 Junior World Championships alongside her twin sister, Jennifer. She was the first Irish-born gymnast to win a gymnastics World title in 2022; Rhys McClenaghan won the first gold medal for Ireland days later.
Domestically, Gadirova is a three-time English and three-time British champion.
