BIATHLE

 BIATHLE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS 2009

The 11th Biathle World Championships took place on Sunday 20 September in the beautiful Principality of Monaco on the French Riviera. Over 330 athletes took to the starting line from Youth E to Masters categories. 

Enjoying the perfect weather conditions it was the youngsters who started the day with enthusiasm. By mid morning, it was a change of scenes as the masters took to the course before the serious competition with the youth A, Junior and Senior categories rounded off the afternoon.

Stealing the show were the Italian athletes, taking gold in three of the four final events - Senior men, women and Junior women. Meanwhile, Czech Replublic took home gold and silver in very competitive Junior men. There was drama in the Youth A boys as one of the leading athletes from South Africa was disqualified after the swim for a wrong transition. Following it was a tight race after the remaining 3 leading South African athletes struggled after the swim with the English competitors proving strong to take gold and silver.

Eager to find out more about the competition and see some amazing photos? Click here.

Want to go a step further and watch the webcast highlights of the competition? Click here.

Full results will be available in coming days.

BIATHLE: A SPORT FOR ALL

Designed as a ‘Sport for All’, Biathle has been developed by UIPM has a competition comprised of the two fundamental components of Modern Pentathlon and most practised sports in the world – run and swim.

The Biathle has universal appeal. It is inexpensive to organise, simple to understand, can be viewed from a single location, and organised practically anywhere in the world at any time of the year. The Biathle competition begins with a pack start of runners who complete one-half of the total running distance before entering a 50 meter transition area.  Athletes then dive into the water and swim the required swimming distance before exiting the water, putting on their shoes and running the second leg of the run to the finish line. The first person to cross the finish line wins. The race distances vary with the age groups concerned.

The concept of Biathle is fundamental to the development of Modern Pentathlon. Whilst there are different ways to ‘develop’ a Pentathlete, such as schools where young Pentathletes start very early with all five events, it is more frequent that competitions are held at youth level where two or more events are combined. Two events (run, swim)/ three events (run, swim, shoot) /four events (run, swim, shoot and fence). Elsewhere athletes who are strong in one event, are progressively introduced to the other pentathlon events, one event at a time.

Many UIPM member federations have already welcomed Biathle in their national competition programmes. Organisers have been private companies, cities, and tourism offices using the Biathle to promote images of tourist places, and the athletes are youngsters, juniors, seniors and masters.

Anyone who has attended a Biathle competition will be impressed with the special spirit of excitement at the start of a young athlete's career as well as the enthusiasm amongst the Masters who have somewhat passed their career but have never completely put it behind them. It is an enjoyable stepping-stone at the start of a young athlete's career to be able to compete under the same circumstances as the Masters and the Biathle World Tour encourages hundreds of children to  continue progressing in our sport.

Further efforts are being made in other disciplines of the Modern Pentathlon. In areas where some disciplines are hardly practised, or even not at all, the UIPM encourages local competition organisers to arrange the Modern Pentathlon competition as a Triathle event with the shooting, swimming and running.

Biathle World Championships and Biathle World Tour

The first Biathle World Championships took place in Monaco in 1999 and Monaco is the host every two years. In between times, the World Championships have been staged in South Africa, Germany, Italy and Great Britain. The average number of participants at a World Championships is 500 athletes and they come from all over the world with some 50 countries having sent representatives to the World Championships. The competition takes place every year in September or October.

The Biathle World Tour was created as a test event in 2002, with the aim to have a fixed circuit of 4-6 cities staging a Tour event every year. The test was a great success and the Biathle World Tour is now a permanent feature of the UIPM International Calendar. Each athlete receives a number of points according to his/her placing in the race. The scoring system is based on that of UIPM's Modern Pentathlon Word Cup standings. At the end of the Tour, the athlete with the most points in his/her age group is declared ‘Biathle World Tour Winner’.

Medals are awarded to the top 3 athletes in each age group in both the World Championships and the World Tour.

BIATHLE COMPETITION RULES

Competition rules for Biathle are available to download here.