Biathlon News
25th February, 2007
Most schools would be happy to have just one competitor in a National Athletics’ final but Arnold enjoyed the extremely rare feat of having 5 students representing the school in two different disciplines over the weekend.
The National Schools’ Biathlon Finals took place in the magnificent surroundings of the University of Bath using their state of the art facilities, which include one of the few 50m swimming pools in the country. In the Year 7 Boys event, Alex Evans swam his 50m in 35.96sec and then ran the second best 1000m time of the day of 3min 06sec to finish in 6th out of the 49 finalists. The top six finalists were only separated by 43 points! Alex’s twin sister, Charlotte, was equally impressive as she finished 11th out of her 60 strong field with a fine run of 3mins 23secs accounting for a large proportion of her points.
In the senior events, Vicky Crawford, came 20th and swam the 5th fastest 100m freestyle of the day with a time of 1min 3.72sec. This was Vicky’s second National Final of the season as she came 6th in the 100m National Backcrawl Final earlier in the year. Sam Matthews completed the quartet of biathletes as he finished 31st in the senior boys finals.
Detailed results of each of these finals can be downloaded from the MPAGB website by clicking here.
Abby Kearney completed a remarkable weekend for the school as she competed in the U17 Inter-Counties Cross Country Championships held at Woolaton Park, Nottingham. After qualifying for the county squad Abby enjoyed a memorable day at the National Finals as she completed the tough 5000m course in 24min 34secs in a field containing the top 250 long distance runners in the country. Abby was also due to compete in the National Biathlon Finals but the clash of dates meant that she had to choose between the two. Most athletes are happy just to get to one National Final in a season!
12th November, 2006
Our large Biathlon squad produced some fantastic performances in the Regional Qualifiers of the British Schools’ Biathlon Championships held in Blackpool at the Palatine Leisure Centre on Sunday. We had the biggest number of entries in the event and 5 of the schools 18 performers managed to qualify for the National Finals to be held in February at the University of Bath.
A fine run from Sam Matthews saw him qualify from the Year 12 Boys race and the fastest swim time of the day for 100m, 1.03.16min, from Vicky Crawford earned her 6th place overall after both events in the Year 12 Girls Race. Abby Kearney put a fast 1000m run to finish in 5th overall in the Year 11 Girls event but the stars of the day were the Year 7 twins of Alex Evans and Charlotte Evans.
Charlotte Evans was leading the Year 7 Girls event after the 1000m run with a time of 3.27.61min. A good 50m swim of 36.44sec consolidated her lead to keep hold of first place. Not to be out done, her brother Alex had to dig deep to mirror his sister.
Alex was lying in 10th place after the 50m swim and he had to finish at least 8 seconds ahead of the rest of the field in the 1000m run if he was to stand any chance of grabbing first place. His run of 3.12.95min, the fastest boys’ time in that age-group, meant that Alex secured a fantastic first place and a unique double for the twins.