World Cheerleading Championships 2024: What's it all about?

The 2024 International Cheer Union (ICU) World Cheerleading Championships are underway with teams from Wales and England already bagging some medals.

Team England have won medals in five categories, with Team Wales also picking up a World title.

More than 11,000 cheerleaders from 21 different countries have come together in Orlando, Florida, to battle it out to be crowned ICU World Champions.

Find out all you need to know about the competition here.

Cheerleading is a sport that involves a team of individuals, known as cheerleaders, who perform acrobatic routines that include dancing, jumps, stunts, and chants - which can be used to motivate and entertain crowds at sporting events.

The ICU Junior World & World Cheerleading Championships takes place between April 24-29 in 2024.

It is held at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, within the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida in the US.

Teams and individuals from around the world come to the event to perform a two-and-a-half-minute long routine in front of a panel of judges hoping to be crowned international champions.

The complex routines include dancing, gymnastic tumbles, acrobatic stunts, jumps, flips and pyramids and are given a score for how difficult their moves are, and how well they are completed.

The team with the highest overall score, will be crowned winners.

Within the competition there are junior and adult divisions, with teams competing in different categories for skills, styles and moves.

Some of the categories include Cheer, Pom, Hip-Hop, Freestyle and Jazz.

The Cheer category is split into - Median, Advanced, Elite, Premier, Adaptive Abilities and Special Abilities, with All-Girl teams, and Co-Ed (mixed boy and girl) teams competing.

Wales' Adaptive Median Abilities team, which is made up of disabled and non-disabled athletes, won a gold medal.

Meanwhile, it was bronze for England's Junior All Girl Elite squad, silver for their Youth Co-Ed Advanced team and gold for the Youth All Girl Advanced squad.

Plus, England's own Adaptive abilities Co-Ed squad has taken the gold in their category.

It's not just cheerleading that is taking place at these championships - pom dance, where dancers perform a high-energy dance routine, showcasing their flare and enthusiasm with pom poms, is also featured.

Team England's Special Abilities Unified pom team won a gold medal!

Although types of cheerleading - or cheer - have existed for many hundreds of years, it is recognised that the start of cheerleading as it's known today, began in the late 1800s.

In 1884 an Irish-American sports coach named Thomas Peebles was noted to encourage organised crowd cheering at Ivy League university sporting events. But in 1898 Johnny Campbell - a student from the University of Minnesota in the US - became known as the first official 'cheerleading athlete' when he stood up to lead the crowd in cheers and chants at a football game.

Before 1940 cheerleaders (also known as yell leaders) were mostly men. This changed during the Second World War in 1941, when many men left the US to serve in the war.

Since then, cheerleading transformed to be made-up of mostly women, and to this day there are more female than male cheerleaders. A report by SportCheer England in 2020 showed that 96% of UK cheerleaders were female.

Cheerleading became a recognised sport by the Olympics in 2021 - meaning it can be included in future games. But there are currently no plans to include cheerleading in the 2024 or 2028 Olympic Games.