Southsider Kate takes aim at unique sport for championships

A DUNDRUM athlete will be leading the field in a unique sport that will see over 450 athletes from over 20 countries arriving in Dublin in September next year.

Kate Coleman Lenehan was in Smithfield Square last week where Pentathlon Ireland launched the 2018 Laser-Run World Championships.

Pentathlon’s profile in Ireland is set to get a big boost when Dublin hosts the major international event in the city-centre location next year.

Kate said she was delighted to see this event come to Ireland.

“We never had the opportunity to try out a dynamic sport like the laser-run when I was in school,” Kate said.

 “So I think it’s fantastic that children across Ireland can now have a go and even compete in a nationwide competition.

“The track will be open to the public on the eve of the 2018 World Championships so it’s an ideal opportunity for anyone to try it out.”

Laser-Run, a combination of running 800m loops and target-shooting with laser pistols, is usually the fifth element of modern pentathlon but is also a standalone sport.

The launch also saw suggestions that Ireland’s chances of winning medals at the next Olympic Games could increase substantially next month if the International Olympic Committee (IOC) votes to introduce a new ‘mixed relay’ in the modern pentathlon.

Ireland’s world-class pentathletes Natalya Coyle and Arthur Lanigan O’Keeffe – both top eight finishers in Rio last summer – say they are hopeful that the event will make it into the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

The mixed relay is part of pentathlon’s World Cup programme and they’ve already proven themselves among the world’s best pairings.

“We’re hearing pretty good things and we have high hopes though obviously, we won’t know until the actual vote in July”, said Lanigan O’Keeffe.

Coyle was ninth on her Olympic debut in London 2012 and has just been upgraded to sixth in Rio 2016 after the fourth-placed Chinese finisher was disqualified for doping.

Lanigan-O’Keeffe won the European title in 2015 and finished eighth in Rio yet they are even better as a pair.

They won relay gold at pentathlon’s World Cup Finals in America last year and travel to Lithuania on June 22-25 to defend that title after topping the relay podium again at the latest World Cup, in Poland.

“We are really well suited to relay because it is half the distance that we usually do individually and we’re both naturally ‘power athletes’ who are best suited to shorter, sprint distances,” Coyle explained.

And she said young Dundrum pentathlete Kate Coleman Lenehan is part of Ireland’s rising pentathlon stars.

“Kate has also just qualified for the World Cup finals which is really good,” Natalya added.

“It’s her first time to qualify for that and it’s really great to see that there’s more people coming through. She’ll be competing in the individual event and is part of our high-performance squad who all train together.”

Pentathlon Ireland is offering free training programmes for Irish schools. For more details see www.pentathlon.ie