Misha Koudinov has spent close to twenty years turning up for New Zealand on the gymnastics floor, and he is not finished yet. The 35 year old has been named in the team for the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games, a selection that will make him only the third New Zealander in history to compete at six editions of the event.
When he steps out in Glasgow this July he will join a very short list. Track and field thrower Robin Tait and lawn bowler Rowan Brassey are the only other New Zealanders to have reached six Commonwealth Games. Shooter Greg Yelavich sits above them all with seven. For a gymnast, in a sport that is notoriously hard on the body and usually short on careers, six is close to unthinkable.
Koudinov’s relationship with the Games stretches back to Melbourne in 2006, where he competed as a 14 year old and 8 months, barely out of school. Two decades later he is still ranked among the best men’s gymnasts the country has produced, with two Olympic Games, multiple World Championships and a long run of World Cup appearances behind him. He is one of the rare New Zealand gymnasts to have a skill named after him, and last month he landed the latest version, the so called Koudinov 2, at the Oceania Championships, a reminder that he is still pushing the difficulty of his routines rather than simply hanging on.
His selection, reported by RNZ, headlines a seven strong artistic gymnastics team that blends hard won experience with a younger group still making their way. Six of the seven train out of Tri Star Gymnastics in Auckland, a club that has quietly become the engine room of the country’s high performance programme.
Alongside Koudinov, the men’s team features William Fu-Allen, who will be at his second Commonwealth Games after Birmingham in 2022 and who finished inside the top 24 on floor at the 2025 World Championships. Nelson born and now Auckland based, Fu-Allen has become one of the team’s most consistent performers. Daniel Stoddart, from Red Beach north of Auckland, has been named for floor and rings, while Alex Istock, who grew up in California before committing to New Zealand, rounds out the men’s group on the horizontal bar.
The women’s team carries one of the more uplifting stories of the selection. Courtney McGregor, a Rio 2016 Olympian, is back in a New Zealand team after five years away. McGregor was originally picked for the Glasgow 2014 Games as a teenager but had to withdraw with injury, so a return to the same city twelve years later has a neat symmetry to it. She has rebuilt her gymnastics from 2025 onwards while completing her final year of medical studies at the University of Auckland, a balancing act that says a good deal about the discipline the sport demands. She is joined by Jun McDonald of Te Wero Gymnastics in Christchurch, named across the all around, uneven bars and floor, and by Sienna Shields of the Waitakere Gymnastics Club in west Auckland.
Gymnastics New Zealand head David Phillips said the squad had been picked for its range as much as its star power. “We’ve selected a team who compete across multiple apparatus and formats and we’re excited to see them perform in Glasgow,” he said in the team announcement. “There’s a strong balance of experience and new talent, athletes who know and understand the Games environment.”
New Zealand Olympic Committee chief executive Nicki Nicol framed the moment in simpler terms. “Selection to the New Zealand Team is a significant achievement,” she said. “Wearing the fern represents the hard work these athletes have put in.” For Koudinov, who first pulled on that fern as a schoolboy, the words carry an unusual amount of mileage.
The Glasgow Games run from 23 July to 2 August and look very different from the sprawling editions of the past. After Victoria in Australia pulled out as host, the event was rebuilt around a tighter ten sport programme staged across a handful of venues, with artistic gymnastics one of the disciplines that survived the cut. Cricket and hockey, among others, did not make the list. The trimmed format means fewer events but a sharper spotlight on the sports that remain, gymnastics included.
For New Zealand fans that spotlight will land squarely on Koudinov. There is no guarantee a 35 year old will medal against a field stacked with athletes barely half his age, and he would be the first to say so. But longevity at this level is its own kind of achievement, and the sight of a New Zealander rolling up to a sixth Commonwealth Games, still adding new skills to his repertoire, is the sort of quietly remarkable thing the team event was built to celebrate. The full team, and the rest of the New Zealand contingent for Glasgow, was confirmed by Gymnastics New Zealand this week.
Are you planning to follow the gymnastics in Glasgow, and where does Koudinov’s longevity rank among New Zealand’s great sporting careers? Let us know in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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