Georgina bags two medals at Olympic Hopes Modern Pentathlon
STRATFORD AC's Georgina Mitchell claimed two medals as she joined forced with nine other young athletes to represent Great Britain at the Olympic Hopes Modern Pentathlon in Hungary.
Olympic Hopes is a multi-sport Youth Games arranged by Hungary since the 1990s in conjunction with Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland.
This year there were 42 events across 28 sports, and the Modern Pentathlon took place at the National Sports Centre, Olimpiai Edzotabor, in Tata.
The Hungarian Modern Pentathlon Federation invited International Federations that wanted to send their best young athletes to take part and Pentathlon GB sent 10 young athletes.
The team was made up of a combination of under-19 and under-17 aged athletes with seven of the team making their international debuts.
All competed in the under-19 age group comprising of the swimming, fencing and combined event (run and laser shoot) disciplines. Other countries to send athletes were Latvia, Belarus, Portugal and Ukraine.
The first day of competition, on Friday, saw the individual swim and fence disciplines taking place followed by the combined events on the Saturday.
Mitchell had a solid 200m swim of 2 minutes 15.17 seconds putting her in fourth place.
She then fenced extremely well to win the fencing discipline with 22 victories and five defeats against the other 27 competitors. This gave Georgina the overnight lead ahead of the combined event.
As Mitchell is only 15, this was the first time she had competed in this older age group as well as it being her first international competition.
In the under-17 age group, the athletes run 3x800 metres and shoot 3x5 targets whereas in the under-19 age group they run a further 800m and shoot a fourth set of targets.
Mitchell had another solid performance in the combined event to finish in fourth place overall, missing out on the podium by just three seconds.
Wycliffe College’s Zoe Davison and Millfield School's Abby Lebus both produced consistent displays across all four 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 final day of the competition saw the mixed relay taking place. Mitchell was teamed up with Kieran Harby with Zoe Davison and Okan Onay, and Abby Lebus and William Swain making up three all GB teams.
The remaining four girls teamed up with some of their Hungarian counterparts to create mixed nationality teams to take part in the competition.
Georgina and Kieran claimed the silver medal. Their performance included an outstanding 21 victories and just seven defeats in fencing to top the discipline standings.
The Stratford AC youngster had a great time, competed well and gained important international competition experience.
They were fortunate to have been accompanied on the trip by Mhairi Spence, who was world champion in 2012 and competed at the London Olympic Games and also added to the experience.
