Two of Andover Modern Triathlon club members, Margaret Smith and Natalie Thomas, have recently taken part in a Biathle in Lignano in Italy.

This was the second event in the 2008 Biathle World Tour Series. First to compete was Margaret in the Masters B class (age 50-59). As usual she was hot on the heels of her Masters C rival Mary Collett for the whole of the first 1,000 metre run. With good transitions from them both, Margaret followed Mary round the 100m sea swim. Mary ran out of the sea into the transition area at a faster pace to gain a few seconds, however the gap stayed the same for the second run, with Mary taking the gold medal in the C class, and Margaret finishing seven seconds later to win the gold medal in the B class.

Junior competitor (age 19-21) Natalie is going from strength to strength due to her hard training and determination. With a very good first 1500m run and a strong relaxed 200m sea swim, she was soon off on her second run. She was going well until contracting a bad stitch but she kept repeating "keep going, keep going" and finished strongly to win the gold medal.

Two weeks later Margaret and Natalie were joined by Youth B competitor (age 15-16) Jess Pike at the British leg of the World Tour in Weymouth. With torrential rain for last year's event, it was nice to see the sun, although the sea was cold for the swim.

First away was Margaret, and with no Mary to latch onto, her race did not feel as good as the previous one, and she finished 25 seconds behind the winner in second place.

With a very good first 1000m run, Jess entered the sea in second place and overtook the leader with a superb 200m swim to exit in first place. With another strong controlled run, Jess kept her lead and made the whole race look easy. It was a very impressive performance, which earned her the coveted first place by seven seconds.

Natalie was the last to compete for AMTC and after her excellent performance in Italy, she admitted that she went away on her first run too fast, and was just behind Lucy Ferguson, who took the silver medal in last year's World Championships. With a very good swim, Natalie was soon out of the water to start her second run and she recovered enough during her swim to turn on the pace for her second run.

A Youth A lady who she had never beaten before was ten seconds behind her, and Natalie was determined to keep her there and she achieved her aim, finishing strongly to take second place.

The next Biathle competition for AMTC members is the British Championships in Salford, Manchester in August, which will be combined with the European Championships.

The British squad for the tenth Biathle World Championships, which take place in South Africa in November, will be selected at Salford.

10:29am Friday 4th July 2008

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