The National Winter Triathlon Championships were held on March 26th in Stoke Mandeville Leisure Centre. There are 19 Areas in the UK and every Area enters their best team of 4 in each of the 3 classes – Open, Junior and Minimus. The lowest score is dropped for the final score for each team. There were approximately 250 competitors.
All competitors will have qualified from their Area competitions so it was the cream of the country competing and the scores at the top were very close. We travelled down the night before and had an Area 5 get together before the competition the next day.
There was a problem with the target mechanism for the Open so they had to shoot static which added to the stress!
The teams selected for Area 5 were :-
OPEN
| Lana Booth | CHS | 2794 |
| Oliver Loud | Wynnstay | 2793 |
| Archie Peffers | WyLL | 2783 |
| Abigail Mulcaster | CHS | 2613 |
- Oliver Loud came 8th Individually with the top shoot of 940.
- Archie Peffers came 9th with a huge swim of 11 L 5m.
- This Open team came a creditable 5th/12
JUNIOR
| Sophie Mulcaster | CHS | 3091 |
| Oberon Kearney | CHS | 3054 |
| Orla Kissane | FnD | 2965 |
| Bethan Stephens | B & Dee | 2893 |
- This Junior team came an amazing 3rd/14
- Individually, Sophie Mulcaster came 4th in Junior Girls and Oberon 4th Junior Boys.
- Orla Kissane ran a 4.56 – the fastest run in the Junior class and faster than any Open girl too.
MINIMUS
| Zara McNamara | E.Ch | 3079 |
| Harvey Brown | CHS | 2997 |
| Archie Evans | B&Dee | 2995 |
| Lily Williams | B&Dee | 2923 |
- This Mini team came a brilliant 2nd/19.
- Individually, Zara won the class with a 920 shoot and a speedy 3.31 for a 1000m run.
- Harvey was 3rd Mini Boy with an even speedier 3.13 time—top run in the class.
- Archie was 4th Mini Boy.
There were 11 other individual competitors representing Area 5. Of these, Leah Lamb (FnD) deserves a special mention as she was the youngest Open girl and had the highest overall score (2799) of the Welsh Girls.
A good time was had by all.
