Blackburn Harrier – Oliver Murray – has recently returned from Portugal having had a great European U17 Championship finishing 9th in the Individual Championship and partnering Zoe Gowers to win Gold in the Team Relays.
Full Individual & Mixed Relay Team Results HERE
Oliver isn’t able to rest on his well earned laurels though and is off to Argentina in four weeks time to compete in the World Youth U19 ‘A’ Championships. Oliver, whose sister is Olympic Silver Medalist and 2014 World Individual Champion – Samantha Murray – is obviously following in her footsteps.
From everyone at Blackburn Harriers all our best wishes for the World Championships.
Oliver’s success is a fine reward for all his hard work. Typically modest, the Club asked him to comment on his performance and achievement and he told us that “After an intense year of training I was given the opportunity to go to Portugal for the Youth B (Under 17) European Championships for Modern Triathlon. The whole week had me feeling very nervous for the Individual and Mixed relay events.
The individual event started on Wednesday in the morning. The day began with a 200M swim where I swam 2:06.08 putting me in the combined event (4×800 m with shooting in between) in 15th position. I ran up 6 places in the individual to 9th and was just beaten by the French nation champion 1500m runner by one second!
The mixed relay was on the Friday and I was partnered with Zoe Gowers, we each swam 100 M freestyle – I swam 56seconds and she swam 64seconds. This allowed us to start the combined in 4th place. However, only 15 seconds separated the first 26 athletes. Zoe ran up from 4th to 2nd and then I managed to take the Italian team on the second shoot and then ran my 800M for GB’s European Gold.
I had a few days rest and am now back to training for the U19 Pentathlon World Championships on Argentina”.
(Oliver and Zoe Gowers – Gold Medalists)
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