The competitive season for the Oxford University Modern Pentathlon Associa- tion started with a bang on November 8th when Oxford hosted their Light Blue rivals at Iffley Road. The Novice Varsity competition is a supposedly “low pressure” competition in which new pentathletes get the chance to compete against Cambridge without taking part in show jumping, one of the five sports which makes up modern pentathlon. But if that sounds easy, remember that they still have to fit in a 3km run and 200m swim on top of the fencing and shooting phases all in one day — this, then, was was hardly a lazy Saturday for Oxford’s pentathletes.
The day started with fencing, in which Oxford put in a strong performance, taking the lead in both the men’s and women’s events thanks to Matt Courtis and Dani Chattendon. Although there was a strong response from Cambridge in the shooting phase, a dominant display from Oxford in the run put them back in control, with Oxford taking 1st-4th places in the men’s event and only one Cambridge athlete preventing the women from doing the same. Alex Rob- ertson and Rosa Chrystie-Lowe were victorious individually in this phase, both coming home well ahead of their competitors. It was a similar story in the pool, with the top placings again being secured by Dark Blue athletes, with Matt Courtis posting a particularly impressive time of two minutes and four seconds.
The leaderboard at the end of the day definitely reflected what had been a day of Dark Blue dominance, with Matt Courtis taking home the men’s individual title, his closest opposition coming from teammates Dom McLoughlin and Alex Robertson. In the women’s event Oxford were also victorious, with Rosa Chrystie-Lowe’s strong all round performance putting her well ahead of the other athletes. Considered in the light of last year’s narrow defeat in both the men’s and women’s events, the victory seems all the sweeter.
Although there is a long way to go until the varsity meeting in April 2015, such strong performances across four of the five disciplines suggest that Oxford’s novice pentathletes could be strong contenders for selection when Oxford next encounter their Cambridge counterparts. Until then, our novice pentathletes will be working hard to stake their claims to take part.
