Pentathlon Ireland’s athletes were delighted to return recently to international competitions. Their coach, Andrei Fedotov, was a great support to them and was thrilled with how his athletes performed. He said “all our athletes showed great character and did not give up until the finish”. Andrei was particularly delighted with the performance of our five young athletes, three of whom were competing in their first ever Pentathlon competition. Their parents lent great support to Andrei and the team and they were very vocal in their encouragement.

First up was the Peridot Indoor International Competition in Budapest. Galway’s Sive Brassil, Cork’s Hanna D’Aughton and Dublin man, Tom O’Brien all competed. This was the first time that these athletes have competed under the new UIPM format. The new format makes it much harder to make the finals of the competition and also makes it a much longer and more arduous competition for those athletes who make the final. This is because the competition now consists of a qualifying round, semi-finals and then A and B finals. Our athletes coped well with the new format and showed great determination and resilience.

Sive celebrated her return to competition by qualifying for the A final and finishing 7^th overall. In her first Senior competition (even though she is still a Junior athlete) Hanna qualified for the B final and finished 11^th in that final and 29^th overall. Sive’s comment on her performance was “It felt good to blow the cobwebs off and try the new pentathlon format. Lots of work to be done but it’s a good place to start. Happy to make it to the end of a gruelling week”.

Hanna was equally happy and commented “My first senior competition and first senior semi. Delighted to have made it to the B final and excited for what’s to come this season.”

Next up was the Lithuanian Youth Cup where 5 of our young athletes competed – 3 of them in their first ever Pentathlon competition.

Pentathlon Ireland were represented in the Under 19 male competition by Robert Cherry and Caolan Costello who ended up 8^th and 9^th respectively. Megan Xu-Ran Piao competed in the Under 17 female category and came 7^th. The highlight of the weekend came when Jamie Hargaden took the Silver medal and Jed Collins the Bronze medal in the Under 17 boys competition. Both of these were competing in a Pentathlon competition for the first time.

The team and their mascot, Charlie the Leprauchan, just happened to bump into Ireland’s very own TV and Radio presenter, Hector Ó hEochagáin, who interviewed them but was unable to accept their invitation to attend the competition later as he would be filming. Rumour has it that the interview will be on TV in September.