Pony Club 'Talent Pentathlete'

Building on the success of Pentathlon Ireland's Olympic results, where former Irish Pony Club athletes; Natalya Coyle finished 9th and Arthur Lanigan-O'Keeffe 25th, Pentathlon Ireland hosted a training camp to introduce pony club athletes to the sport of modern pentathlon.

This pilot project was run in conjunction with The Irish Pony Club and Horse Sport Ireland was extremely successful. Thirty-seven athletes identified from performances in the Irish Pony Club Tetrathlon (swimming, running, cross country riding and shooting) events were invited to The Watershed, Kilkenny on Thursday and Friday of last week.

Athletes were given expert coaching in swimming (John Duffy), running & shooting (Andy Mackenzie and Lindsey Weedon) and fencing (Marek Makay) disciplines with an educational talk on the difference between Pony club riding and the Pentathlon riding (Eva Hutchinson). John Flood, Team Manager from the Irish Pony Club Tetrathlon, was also on hand to support. The athletes thoroughly enjoyed the two days and were excited to try out the fencing discipline that was new to most of them.

The athletes were encouraged to enter the Pentathlon National Championships that followed the training camp on Friday evening and Saturday. All that did so, seemed to have a very enjoyable time and there were some extremely encouraging performances across all events.

On the whole, this was an enormously successful training camp and the support of the athletes and parents should be acknowledged. Pentathlon Ireland is looking forward to running more events in the future with the support of the Irish Pony Club and Horse Sport Ireland.