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MODERN PENTATHLON - Novice Varsity Match Report

On the 23rd of October, Cambridge University Modern Pentathlon Club’s novice athletes took part in their first battle against ‘the other place’ in the novice varsity match. The club had a huge turnout out taking 13 new recruits who all performed incredibly well and put their newly learnt skills to the test with some great results! The day started with the fencing where the athletes fenced everyone from both Cambridge and Oxford in a round robin format with one hit against each competitor.  Given that fencing was a new sport to everyone taking part and that they had only had 3 weeks to learn, there were some impressive performances on piste. In the men’s competition, the fence was won by Oxford but Cambridge’s Hector Newman came second, winning 14 out of 21 bouts.  In the ladies fence, an Oxford athlete with fencing experience came out top, with Cambridge’s top scoring athlete being Susannah Bodie winning 12 out of the 21 bouts.

The next event was the combined event which consists of four by 800m runs separated with a shoot between each one. The men’s CE was won by Cambridge’s Zac Howe (800m blue) who had been poached from the university athletics club and ran an incredibly fast time which left most of the spectators stunned. CUMPC’s Fred Benham-Crosswell made it a Cambridge 1,2 with a solid run and shoot. In the ladies event, Cambridge’s Amy Radford had a brilliant run and won the CE with an impressive time with the rest of the girls having great runs and some impressive shoots!

The last event of the day (as the competition didn’t include riding), was the swim which saw some huge improvements from many of the competitors as it was most people’s first racing experience. For the men, Hector won the swim with Fred only a second behind him. In the ladies, Anna Gibbons won for Cambridge and other notable performances were made by Hazel Scurr and Eleanor Sealy for Cambridge.

Overall, Zac won the men’s competition after his incredible run, with Fred in second and Hector in third meaning that Cambridge won the team competition for the men. The ladies competition was won by an Oxford athlete but Anna came in second overall with solid performances in all disciplines. Amy also did incredibly well and came 3rd overall. However, Oxford had some impressive all-rounders and managed to win the team competition. Some really promising results across all the disciplines mean we’re really looking forward to seeing how everyone progresses throughout the year and give exciting prospects for the varsity match come Easter! Well done to everyone who competed and also to the current club members for coming to Oxford to help run the event!

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