Rings master Courtney Tulloch says he’ll stop playing it safe now he has banked a dream World Championship bronze and the Paris Olympics await.

The Maidstone gymnast nailed a rings routine he has carefully honed for two years to win a global medal at the fourth attempt.

Tulloch is a trailblazer for Britain on the apparatus - the first to reach a world rings final in 2014, the first to win a European medal in 2016 and now the first Brit to win a world medal.

“I’m just so happy, it’s been a long time coming,” said the 27-year-old.

“I’ve done a lot of World Championships and not got that medal. The confidence is building now and it’s growing.

“I feel like I’m finally able to go into the finals and deal with the pressure and the psychology going into it. This year we’ve had an incredible year and the confidence is sky-high.

“It’s just about keeping that going into next year, the British team as a whole is in a great place. We’ve got to continue that now until the Olympics.”

It has been a historic week for the host nation who matched their best-ever performance at a World Championships with a day of action to spare.

In the men’s team final Tulloch matched his qualification score of 14.666 to help haul Britain back from the brink and onto the podium, bringing with it an Olympic quota place.

Hearing the Liverpool crowd cheer for him and him alone was a totally different experience.

“You feel invincible when you’re with your boys but out there, you’re alone,” he said. “You feel naked, it’s just you!

“They’re completely different feelings but when I nailed that landing, it felt incredible.”

Tulloch has resisted the temptation to upgrade his rings routine in recent months in a quest for that coveted global gong.

His difficulty score of 6.100 was lower than the complexity of the 6.300 routines attempted by gold medallist Adem Asil of Turkey and China’s Zou Jingyuan who took silver.

The 27-year-old insists that won’t stay the same for much longer as he eyes an Olympic debut and a medal at Paris 2024.

“I’ve kept this routine for a long time so I’ve been able to really work on getting it as clean as possible.,” he said.

“We were thinking about upping the start value and getting a different skill in there, but the World Championships is a different kettle of fish.

“In Europe I’d be able to get away with that, here it would be a different story.

“It wasn’t quite perfect, the skill we were going for, so we decided to go back to this routine and knowing I can do it clean. Next year I have to drive that start value up and I will do.

“I want to be on top of the podium - I’ll savour the moment but next week, it’s back to work and progressing and improving.”

The World Gymnastics Championships Liverpool 2022 will be one of the largest international sporting events ever to be held in the city. Over 500 gymnasts from more than 70 countries will compete at the M&S Bank Arena from 29 October to 6 November 2022. Tickets are available at www.2022worldgymnastics.com/tickets