U.K. and Ireland Schools Pentathlon International Emirates Indoor Arena Glasgow

Rebecca Wright gained her first England Schools International vest and delivered in some style to place 2nd,a superb silver medal at Glasgow last Saturday at the Emirate indoor arena. Each age category had sixteen athletes; four each from Scotland, Wales, Ireland and England.

Rebecca was competing in the U16 category. First event up was the long jump for which Rebecca has received coaching from John Herbert. A jump of 5.06 metres was a good solid start to place her 8th just outside her PB . Next up was the 60 metre hurdles which is one of Rebecca’s strongest events. A big PB of 9.00 secs was the fastest on the day. This pushed Rebecca back up to 3rd and left her hurdles coach,former Olympian Tony Jarrett, a very happy man.

Next event was the high jump which is Rebecca’s weakest event without any real coaching. Rebecca jumped 1.33 below her best and unfortunately this shunted her back to 13th from 16 With still two events to go could Rebecca climb back up to the podium level. The Shot saw Rebecca put a massive PB of 13.12 metres to place her 1st in this event. This places her 11th on U.K. Under 17 rankings. Her coach for this event knew she was capable of over 13 metres as she had performed this in recent weeks at training.

This took Rebecca up to 5th with all to play for the 800 metres the final event. Since the English Schools event last September John Stow changed Rebecca’s training for this event whereby Rebecca conducted similar sessions that helped Natasha Wynn do so well last summer. Rebecca was lying 6th in her 800 metre race reaching 600 in 1 mins 59 before unleashing a suoerb last lap passing four athletes to place 2nd in that race with a 10 second PB of 2 mins 33. So after an anxious wait this final discipline took Rebecca up to the silver medal position with a new PB of 3309 points just over 400 points more than what she achieved at Sheffield last March .A colossal improvement from our athlete. The winner was Tara O’Connor of Ireland in 3508 points

This was a great experience for Rebecca which will now see her take a short break before further action this winter on the indoor circuit.