St Mary's Calne
On Tuesday evening, the Sixth Form where lucky enough to hear from Kate Allenby MBE, who is an Olympic Bronze Medallist in Modern Pentathlon.
During dinner, we heard about Kate’s favourite pentathlon disciplines, how she became a pentathlete, and interesting insights into recent pentathlon events that we had seen in the news. She also highlighted some of the aspects of pentathlon that many of us didn’t know about, such as the fact that the horse they ride for show jumping is randomly selected from a hat 30 minutes before the competition! We really enjoyed getting to know her, especially as many of us are aspiring athletes ourselves.
In Kate’s speech, we were inspired by her ability to connect sport and her experiences to each of our individual objectives that we are aiming towards and challenges that we are going through. She spoke about her path to the Olympics, and the struggles she overcame throughout, all while asking us to think about our own goals and how we might achieve them.
There were many entertaining anecdotes, but with an underlying theme of ‘Plan, Prepare, Deliver,’ it taught us that with the proper motivation and preparation we can achieve our goals.
We heard about Kate’s story of her Olympic Games in Sydney 2000, and how she went on to win Bronze that year in Modern Pentathlon. She told us about her training running up to the event in Hungary, her difficulties in improving her fencing, and how she tackled the nerves that are associated with such a big competition; I know many of the UVI will be taking this on board for A Levels this year!
We all thoroughly enjoyed the evening; a huge thank you to Kate for such an amazing and inspiring talk.
Daisy B, UVI