Gordon delighted at Modern Pentathlon victory

On 2nd April the Ballantyne’s travelled to Bath for the week-end to watch Gordon take part in the 2022 Modern Penthathlon Championships.  Competing in the Under 15’s age category, Gordon knew competition was going to be tough.

The event has a gruelling 6 hr schedule involving swimming, epee fencing and laser running.

Gordon started with the 100m swim where he set a new personal best time by three seconds finishing in 1:05.49.  Gordon’s immediate response to his swim was, “Gill is so smart dad, I never actually thought that slowing me down in training would make me faster!”

This put him in third place and next up was epee fencing where he had 30 individual matches on a one strike format. Gordon won 20 matches out of 30, beating the lead fencer who had qualified for the national fencing finals along the way! This moved him up to 2nd place overall, just six points behind the leader.

Next up it was the laser run. Laser run is the exhilarating finale to the Modern Pentathlon with athletes required to alternate between shooting a laser pistol and running in a race to the finish line.

The six point gap after the first two events translated into a 6 second deficit going into the 1800m run. It is a staggered start where the athlete who has the most points starts first and the rest of the athletes follow based on their time deficit. The run is split into three 600m runs broken up by three 10 metre laser pistol target shoots.  It is a le-mans start where the athletes run a short 50m to the shooting range.  Gordon had a phenomenal first leg and was ahead after the first shoot, despite being 6 seconds down at the start.  He quickly opened up a 30 second gap which brought him home in style to win his first National Penthathlon title.

Dad Dave is very proud and said the victory made the 8hr round trip all worth while.