Joe Fraser interview: 'I'm a gymnastics OAP - it's my duty to inspire on the road to LA 2028'

When the 26-year-old begins this interview by revealing he took six months off training immediately after last year’s Paris Olympics, it conjures images of palm trees, sandy beaches and sun loungers.

Instead, in addition to getting a bathroom fitted at his new Sutton Coldfield home, Fraser used the time to fulfil the long-term ambition of opening his own gym.

The facility in Lichfield, Joe Fraser Gymnastics, is the former Sandwell College student's way of giving back to the sport and inspiring the next generation.

Yet the effect has worked both ways, providing the two-time Olympian with motivation to enter another cycle targeting Los Angeles 2028 and the medal which has so far proved agonisingly elusive.

“After Paris, part of me thought I was going to retire. I definitely had conversations about it,” he says.

“For a while I didn’t really know where I stood. Or how I wanted to approach this next cycle.

“But then, I kind of got the itch. 

“The way I see it now, is my first Olympic cycle was for myself. With Covid, it was the chance for me to just go and become an Olympian.

“Then Paris, last year, was a chance for my family and friends to come over and watch. That one was for them.

“This Olympic cycle now is about inspiring the next generation and the club I have set-up. I feel like it is my obligation to give it my best for the next three or four years, or however long I can.”

Fraser is speaking from Jakarta, where this week he takes the first serious step on the journey to LA2028 at the world championships, which start on Sunday.

Yet amid the talk of jet lag and the endless traffic jams in a city of 11 million people, his thoughts very quickly head back to the Midlands and the venture which over the past 14 months has changed him as a person.

Fraser had wanted to open a gym in Birmingham prior to the 2022 Commonwealth Games but was unable to find a suitable location in his hometown.

The time-off after Paris allowed him to revisit the project and eventually he found a site in an old printing factory. After countless zoom calls and meetings with architects and landlords and having eventually securing a change of use with the council, he got the keys last December. 

At which point, as the ever-upbeat Fraser explains with a typical smile: “My world exploded.”

“I was definitely naive,” he continues. “But then I think if I wasn’t naive, I wouldn’t have done it in the first place! 

“I truly do love it all, the ups, the downs and everything in between because, believe me, there are definitely ups, downs and everything in between.

“It has been quite a journey. I think the last 12 months have really shaped the person I am. They have changed me for the better.”

The gym opened in the spring and business is already booming, with more than 600 people heading through the doors each week, ages ranging from 18 months in the pre-school classes, to 50 in the eldest groups.

Fraser is fully hands-on. The trip to Indonesia is the longest time he has spent away from the gym and he admits, with a little embarrassment, to occasionally checking the security cameras “like some kind of weirdo” when sat alone in his hotel room.

“I’m just so invested,” he says. “For a period of July and August there were five days a week when I would train in the morning, shoot over to the gym and coach all evening until about 7.30 or 8.30. It was rinse repeat. 

“Now I have kind of got myself into a position where I only coach three days a week but even then I find myself, when i finish training on the days I am not meant to go in, wondering whether I should go in and do some admin. 

“Trying to break that cycle is the process I am currently on! I’ve got a great team around me and more than once I have been ordered home by the club manager. She always tries to kick me out!”

There is at least no danger of Fraser turning up in Lichfield this week as he competes more than 7,000 miles away in what will be his fifth world championships.

It is the first time the event has ever been hosted in Indonesia and it promises to be big, with more than 16,000 fans expected to pack out the Gelora Bung Karno Sports Complex.

While Fraser is eager to inspire the next generation, he also has to keep them off his back with the fight for places in Team GB only getting tougher.

Courtney Tulloch, at 29, is the only older member of the squad.

“They love to remind me of that,” says Fraser. “I don’t know when it happened but all of a sudden I am an OAP in the gymnastics world. 

“Everything creaks. I do need WD40 from time to time but I manage and here I am, back at my fifth world championships. 

“It is a great team, we have a great camaraderie and we really push each other. We have been working really hard to train how we want to compete. 

“That has been a big focus for us all. We have really put the work in the gym to then translate it to competition. Hopefully it all comes together.”

Gymnastics ranks among the most physically demanding of sports and Fraser has experienced more than his share of injury pain, famously winning three gold medals at Birmingham 2022 with a broken foot.

A serious shoulder injury, sustained after he became the first British male to win the European all-around title later that year, then kept him out of action for 12 months and almost forced his retirement.

Yet after the extended training break he has arrived in Jakarta claiming to feel the best he ever has ahead of a major competition.

Last month’s Paris World Cup meet, which saw Fraser win gold on the parallel bars and bronze on the rings, provided further encouragement.

“That was my first time competing since the Olympics, really,” he says. “It was positive. I know my routines are in a good place. Now it’s about seeing where we are on a world stage.”

With no team competition in these championships, Fraser will instead focus on just two pieces of apparatus, with a decision on which to come later on Saturday.

“I think the time off (after the Olympics) really did help,” he continues. “I did minimal training and my body healed quite well. 

“Building back up steadily, my body was really good. I just had a couple of niggles along the way but that is kind of where I am at.

“I just want to give it everything I have got. It is a chance to get our feet on the ground coming into this LA cycle because I feel we can achieve great things coming into LA.”

Whatever happens now, it has been some career, yet with the Olympics there is undoubtedly a sense of unfinished business.

Fraser was part of the teams which finished fourth in each of the past two Games, while a fifth-placed finish in the individual all-around in Paris underlined his status as a serious contender on the big stage.

“I’d love to win an Olympic medal, or even a couple, just so I could take them into the gym,” he says.

“I saw what the kids were like the other week when I came home from the Paris World Cup and took my medals in, how much they loved it.

“For me, that was everything. Can you imagine what it would be like taking an Olympic medal in? How cool would that be?”