10 young Pentathlon GB athletes competed at Olympic Hopes in Tata, Hungary last weekend, gaining some important competition experience and producing many impressive performances.
GB Team (Photo: Mhairi Spence)
The team was made up of a combination of Under 19 and Under 17 aged athletes with 7 of the team making their international debuts. All competed in the Under 19 age group to take part in the Tetrathlon (swim, fence, combined event) rather than Triathlon (swim, combined event) format.
The first day of competition (Friday 27th October) saw the individual swim and fence disciplines taking place followed by the combined events on the Saturday.
In the girls’ event, Plymouth College’s Georgina Mitchell produced a fantastic display, which included topping the fencing standings with 22 victories and 5 defeats, to finish 4th, missing out on a podium by just three seconds. Wycliffe’s Zoe Davison and Millfield’s Abby Lebus both produced consistent displays across all 4 disciplines to finish 12th and 17th respectively. These performances meant that the trio of Georgina, Zoe and Abby claimed bronze in the team event.
The remaining 4 GB girls were headed by Yorkshire Pentathlon’s Abbie Holyoake with a strong combined event moving her up to 23rd at the finish. Rossall Pentathlon’s Katie Hughes produced the 3rd quickest swim of the day (2:15.07) to finish 24th with North Kent MPC’s Gabriella Eltham following her across the line in 25th. Yorkshire Pentathlon’s Jenna Flintoff, who was among the youngest athlete’s in the competition, finished 26th on her international debut.
In the boys’ event, Yorkshire Pentathlon’s Kieran Harby finished as the top Brit in 19th after strong fencing and swimming performances with Oxford Pentathletes’ Okan Onay a place further back after finishing strongly in the combined event. The final member of the boys’ team, Will Swain, finished 31st, including the highlight of being quickest of all in the pool with a stunning 1:59.38 swim, over 5 seconds quicker than anyone else.
The final day of the competition saw the mixed relay taking place with Georgina Mitchell and Kieran Harby, Zoe Davison and Okan Onay, and Abby Lebus and William Swain making up three all GB teams. Meanwhile, the remaining 4 girls teamed up with some of their Hungarian counterparts to create mixed nationality teams to take part in the competition.
The highlight came from Georgina and Kieran as the young Brits excelled throughout the day to claim the silver medal. Their performance included an outstanding 21 victories and just 7 defeats in fencing to top the discipline standings. There were strong performances from the other GB pairs too as Zoe and Okan produced a sublime 12:24.58 combined event to finish 11th whilst Abby and Will came 13th, including the quickest swim of 1:58.78.
In the mixed British-Hungarian teams, Jenna Flintoff finished 7th with Gabriella Eltham 10th, Katie Hughes 12th and Abbie Holyoake 14th.
The event was the last competition that our youth athletes will be competing at in 2016 with winter training now continuing before the 2017 season gets underway in the New Year.
You can see the full results here.
Lead photo shows the girls’ team (L-R) Zoe Davison, Abby Lebus and Georgina Mitchell
Report courtesy of Pentathlon GB
