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COACH and athlete Andy Price is encouraging youngsters in the kingdom to take up sport and hopes many aspiring competitors will shine during Friday’s BRR Biathle 2015, the first time an event of this kind has been staged in Bahrain.
The biathle is a sub-sport of modern pentathlon, a contest that normally features five events, and was invented to create opportunities for training in the running and swimming sections in real race conditions.
Price, 50, who works at the British Embassy, is helping to bring the sporting spectacular to the kingdom alongside the Bahrain Road Runners at the Hamala Beach Resort.
He said: “Biathle is an event designed to encourage children to participate in multi-sports and is a very good stepping stone into triathlon.”
According to Price, it is absolutely safe to participate in and it is a transitional run, swim, run event. He explained: “You can’t stop kids from running, just look at a playground during breaks!
“The swim will be carefully controlled and will take place in a canal and have boats in the water to offer a safety line for competitors if needed. The complete event will be staged within Hamala and will be a very safe environment.”
The competition was open to children who turn seven by the end of the year and the distance of the running and swimming depends on the age of each entrant.
For example, a seven or eight-year-old will run 250 metres then change and swim 50 metres and then finish with a 250 metres run.
Adults will run 1,500 metres, swim 200 metres and will then run a further 1,500 metres.
Price said: “The distances are deliberately shorter to encourage more to compete. There are relatively few events for younger kids to compete in so this is a good way of developing talent on the island.
“If we get the right standard of runners and enough funding, then I hope to take some age group teams to represent Bahrain at the World Biathle Championship in September to be staged in Georgia.
“I urge children to come along and try it when the next event is publicised. Who knows, you or your children could be the next Shaikh Nasser and become an international athlete too!”
Price has been taking part in pentathlons since the 1990s, competing for the UK national team for three years.
He often runs biathles with his wife, Vicki, a teacher at St Christopher’s School, his daughter, Kizzy, a 15-year-old student at the school, and son, James, 16, who studies in the UK.
Since 2010, he and his family have participated in three World Biathle Championships and last year’s European Championship in which James won Gold.
Price has coached Kizzy for the past five years and runs a training group at the National Stadium for 10 local athletes twice-a-week.
Kizzy has notched various sporting accolades. She qualified for the World Championships in Bulgaria in 2011 and in 2012 she won a Team Silver at the World Championships in Dubai and finished fifth individually.
She and Jamie both won the Dubai Biathle World Tour event in their categories in Dubai a couple of months back. They also won the team and individual Aquathon event in October 2014. At the age of 14, Kizzy won in the 16-29 age category at the Bahrain Sprint Triathlon competition.
She also emerged victorious in 2014 in the Dessange Challenge Kid’s Race, the Bahrain Olympic Youth Society U16 Challenge, The Cherry Tree Trot and the Bahrain Challenge U16 event.
Kizzy also recently competed and won with a team of athletes in the BRR Duathlon (run, bike, run) event at the Sailing Club.
Kizzy, who started running at the tender age of seven, and dreams of becoming a professional athlete, said: “My parents were into running and my dad took me along to competitions when I was young. He is not just my coach but also my mentor. It’s really a great sport to be a part of. It’s freeing and you meet a lot of people.”
The biathle starts at 7am at Hamala Beach Resort. Registered competitors must pay their entry fees (BD3 for children up to 16 and BD5 for those 17 and above) today during bib pick-up between 5pm and 7pm at Seef Mall’s Organics Café.
For further details, visit www.BahrainRoadRunners.com
