Lower Sixth student Alex Middleton represented Great Britain (GB) in the 2023 European Biathle / Triathle Championships in June, and we were delighted to hear that he won two gold medals. Congratulations!
Alex competed in the boys U17 biathle which consisted of a 1,200m run, transitioning into a 200m lake swim, followed by a second 1,200m run. There was a field of 22 boys representing 10 different countries in his race, but Alex triumphed!
Alex also competed in the U17 mixed gender relay and won gold with his partner.
Alex says, “I started to do biathles at around the age of 11 and enjoyed combining my two favourite sports, swimming and running. I decided to enter the European qualifiers and to my surprise I got into the team. I continued to train at my local swim and run clubs and competed with the GB squad every chance I could. I competed at multiple European and World events.
“Through the biathle racing, I came across triathle which includes shooting and this in turn, led me onto discovering modern pentathlon. However, Covid-19 hit before I had my chance to go to Europeans or worlds for pentathlon and put a stop to my GB racing.
“When the lockdown lifted, I became interested in water polo and over the past two years I have progressed to the GB team water polo team. With the water polo European tournament coming up, I am keen to secure my place in the squad and go to the tournament so that is my current focus.
“However, this summer I decided to go back to the biathle to see what it was like and to my amazement I was selected for the team to go to Europeans. This then led to me training very hard in the couple months before the European championships which were held in Germany.
“At the race venue itself, all my hard training paid off as I managed to stay with the front group throughout the first run, then I found myself putting distance between them and myself on the swim before pulling even further away on the second run. It felt amazing to win the individual gold and the relay gold was a great bonus.
“For the future, I would like to continue to progress back through the GB pentathlon, triathlon and triathle program but also keep my water polo at a GB level and go far with that too. I would one day like to go the Olympics for one of the sports.”
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