12 year old Evie Bartl won the U14 National Pentathlon Championship

Evie Bartl displayed a very confident, consistent and in the end also a very gutsy performance and truly deserved to be crowned Scottish Champion. The young Harrier showed her intention to make an impact with the first action of the competition, opening her shot put event with a throw of 9.32m (1cm less than her PB), which proved big enough to establish a comfortable lead; a lead Evie never surrendered  throughout the competition.

Her 60m hurdle race got off to a quick start and Evie was soon taking the lead and was only denied 1^st place on the finishing line. Her reward was a fine new PB of 10.40 (previous PB 10.56), which meant she extended her lead even more.

 

A decent 4.00m long jump (third furthest of the competition) gave Evie a substantial lead going into the lunch break.  At that stage Evie had established a substantial lead of 180 points in front of the second placed athlete and over 200 points in front of the third placed athlete. This gave Evie enough confidence going into the second last event the high jump, equalling comfortably her PB of 1.35m in the first attempt and almost clearing 1.38m. Although a number of athletes were able to jump higher than Evie she still had in a comfortable lead going into the last event, the 800m.

A Pentathlon can be won or lost even at the last stage of the event and Evie was well aware that she had to run the race of her life not to surrender her lead, as her 800m time was the slowest of all competitors in her heat. The race proved to be a real thriller as Evie was trailing for most of the race behind the field but showed real guts to close the gap and to battle it out on the home straight with the third placed athlete. Her courage and determination paid off and she run a new PB of 2.58, which was still good enough to be crowned overall winner with a combined score of over 2200 points. (The final results (points) are still to be published.)

Her proud dad and coach Harald was very impressed how composed Evie conducted herself, being very focused and determined until the very last moment and it all paid off in the end.