MODERN PENTATHLON: Aussie athlete Marina Carrier has pushed through a physically enduring afternoon/evening to finish 23^rd in the women’s individual modern pentathlon at the second summer Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China.

Spanning just over four hours 18-year-old Carrier showed her multi-disciplinary skills off, competing in a 200m swim, a fencing round and a combined running and shooting event across several different venues.

Crossing the finish line in last place after running a physically demanding 3.2km track with bouts of shooting in between, the third and final leg of the event, Carrier sported a huge smile as she shot her hands above her head winning over the support of the entire crowd.

“I just thought you know I’m last, it doesn’t matter like I may as well show the crowd that I’m not going to be broken from this, I can only move forward,” she said.

“Coming last isn’t the worst thing in the world. I’m here, I’m in the Youth Olympic Games, I’m with the top 24 pentathletes in the world so I crossed that line and I’m proud of the fact that I made it here through exams through lots of stress and getting across that line was just one part of the whole journey.”

Finishing on 835 pts Carrier was 219 points behind winner Xiuting Zhong from China. Francesca Summers from Great Britain and Anna Matthes from Germany took home the silver and bronze.

Earlier in the day Carrier competed in a 200m swim which saw her blow her PB out of the water with a time of 2:26.32. After the swim the Sydneysider was ranked 18^th on 262 points heading into the fencing leg of the event.

However the short break in between the commute from the pool to the fencing venue had Carrier frazzled.

“I was feeling completely stressed because we had five minutes to turn around and I was still half in my racing suit and I was very half dressed on the bus, everyone was squished in and then as soon as I got here the volunteers were hurrying me along to get on the piste so it was quite a stressful transition between the two events,” she said.

“Normally you have an hour and you have a shower, get dressed and take it easy but at this event it was very full on and I suppose I wasn’t as relaxed and warmed up as I wanted to be... It would be preferable to be in one venue but it is sort of part of the event.”

After ranking 22^nd in the fencing round robin on Friday, Carrier entered the day with 195 points in the fencing. The second round of fencing was based on a ladder system whereby the bottom two athletes compete in a one hit bout and the winner progresses until all athletes have competed.

Taking to the piste in the second bout Carrier beat Turkey’s Ilke Ozyuksel gaining an extra five points equalling five seconds off her start time in the run/shoot. Unfortunately Carrier lost the next bout to Ukraine’s Yana Polishchuk which meant she finished the fencing with 200 points and in last place.

“It doesn’t make you feel very positive when you come off from two bouts but I guess that is sort of what the ladder system does,” she said.

With a penalty of two minutes in the final leg of the event, the run/shoot, Carrier did well to finish in a time of 15.27.30, faster than three other competitors but says it was a really hard course to get the rhythm she would have liked.

“I think there is about 32 bends in the space of 15 minutes so that was pretty tough because you couldn’t stride out and get into a rhythm because running is really great if you can do that and keep up a good pace but yeah it was just so hard with all those turns and they were really sharp and I think it was difficult because of that.”

Nevertheless Australia’s first female youth modern pentathlete says she took a lot away from the experience.

“I’ve learnt not to get flustered by timing, you’ve just got to roll with the punches and go with it, you can’t really fight against it,” she said.

“I have also learnt that I need to focus, especially in the shooting and not being distracted by the crowd, you know this is the first really big event with shooting into the crowd so I think I’ve learnt you’ve really got to stick to your process and by doing that usually the results follow on.”

Overall Carrier says the whole experience has motivated her to improve looking forward to not only the mixed team event in the short term but even the Olympics further down the track.

“I was speaking to Max Esposito’s grandmother [after the event] and she said look you’ve got to taste defeat if you want to taste victory so I have tasted defeat today and I can only work up from here.”

Laura Judd

Olympics.com.au

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