Cobham Hall School Website: Sports News
Cobham Student is an Olympic Hopeful


Kate French's all-round sporting talents have made her a natural for the sport of Modern Pentathlon, and her potential has been spotted by Sport England, who are sponsoring her training.  She is now aiming for the 2012 Olympics.


Stop Press:  Kate took part in the Modern Pentathlon Youth Italian Open in April, representing GB Pentathlon and competing against athletes from Italy, Hungary and Poland.  At Youth level, the event includes only four of the five events, swimming, shooting, running and fencing.

Kate won the shoot by two points, led the GB team home in the swim and won the fencing, producing her biggest point haul of the competition and giving her the overall lead going into the run.  She led from the start and eventually finished 18 seconds ahead of the chasing field, winning the Individual Gold in great style.

This outstanding performance helped the GB team win the silver medal in the team competition.


Kate recently enlisted the help of four friends for a school assembly.  They modelled her Great Britain kit while she described the five disciplines and showed some images of international competitions in which she has taken part this year.

The five events in the Modern Pentathlon are Running, Pistol Shooting, Fencing, Riding and Swimming.

2007 was a very exciting summer for Kate, who competed abroad for Great Britain in Modern Pentathlon.

 

In July, Kate was selected to compete for GB in the European Youth B Triathlon Championships (her correct age group) in the Canary Islands, and was 5th individual.

 

Next she went out to Sweden to compete in a warm up competition in preparation for the Youth A World Championships (the age group above Kate) . Here she came 4th as an individual.

 

In August Kate flew out to Pretoria, South Africa, for the Youth A World Championships. She and the rest of the team received 2 weeks high altitude training before the main competition, which saw Kate achieving 10th place as an individual, and her team winnning the silver medal in the main competition and the gold medal in the team relay.