![\"Ethan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/8a4eefd39f1325aff9ae720f72ad2cba6b3f7934.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nIn the moments before Ethan McGuinness was expected to launch into a series of upside-down flips and twists at the tumbling world championships, blood was gushing out of his nose.<\/p>\n
The nose bleeds the 24-year-old suffered as a child have returned, and no doctor has found a way to stop them. While they make sporadic appearances during training, they\u2019ve become a certainty in competitions \u2013 including during the finals of the sport\u2019s most important competition.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ethan McGuinness celebrates his final tumbling pass in Navarra Arena, with a certain facial accessory. Credit: FIG<\/p>\n
\u201cI put tissue in my nose in the warm-up and I went through about four tissues because the blood was just dripping through,\u201d he said. \u201cI had ice on my face, on my nose, [I was] pinching my nose in the times when I was just standing on the side, but it just wouldn\u2019t stop this time. Usually, it will settle down after a while in the competition, but this time it was really bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the competition floor in Pamplona, Spain, four competitors remained and McGuinness was on to his fifth nostril-size roll of tissue. He\u2019d entered the world championships this month without expecting to win due to a myriad of other injuries, including tendinitis and a small tear in his shoulder, but now his biggest concern was also the most familiar.<\/p>\n
As a non-Olympic sport, the world titles are the highest level of competition in tumbling, and though McGuinness had claimed a title in Bulgaria in 2022, this time he\u2019d hoped for a bronze medal at best.<\/p>\n
Breathing out of one nostril and feeling lightheaded from his previous tumbles with a bleeding nose, McGuinness left his coach at the start of the red tumble track and launched into a series he knew he could execute.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went for it, landed it securely and then won,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The tissue stayed firmly up his nose while he waved to the crowd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the moments before Ethan McGuinness was expected to launch into a series of upside-down flips and twists…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-295643","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}