Alice Barnes pointed down at her legs below her lycra mountain bike
racing shorts. The bruises and scars were pock-marked across her knees
and shins. The 16-year-old from Northamptonshire showed the tenacity
which makes great champions last weekend. She had come to Sheffield to
prove a point.
The younger sister of Hannah Barnes, 18, who has won a hatful of
junior UK titles in road and track cycling as well as mountain bike
racing, young Alice was the only competitor for central England among
thirteen regional teams at the UK School Games mountain biking event
in Wharncliffe Woods, a gem of a hillside course, six miles north of
Sheffield.
Barnes took part in the individual event, winning gold, but had
decided to compete alone in the relay, too, tearing uphill and roaring
downhill four times around the course and still outstripping all
opposition.
She won by several seconds. Competing alone in the four-person relay
meant her final time was discounted by officials, but Barnes had made
her point.
“The cuts and bruises are just what happens in mountain biking,”
explained the whizz kid in the woods having shown herself to be one of
the athletes to watch for in the future at the first-ever staging of a
mountain biking event at the UK School Games.
Barnes is one of 1600 elite junior athletes from the home countries
who have been competing in 12 sports in venues across Sheffield in the
past four days in an event designed to emulate a senior multi-sport
Games event.
Young cyclists, just as the brilliant Nicole Cooke did before taking
up road racing, tend to compete at all five disciplines.
Barnes is no different. “It’s completely flat where I live in
Northamptonshire, but I’m slowly moving towards mountain biking as my
favourite discipline,” she explained.
A fine weekend in the sun-dappled woods above Sheffield, accruing
plaudits, will have helped. There is no disappointment, either, that
she will miss out on the grand show in London next year, when the
Olympic and Paralympic Games come to town. “I’m over that…I’m
looking forward to going abroad to compete. Where could be better than
Rio…?”
The UK School Games has been funded since 2008 with a £6million grant
from Legacy Trust UK, an independent charity set up to help build a
lasting cultural and sporting legacy from the London 2012 Olympic and
Paralympic Games.
As revealed in Telegraph Sport yesterday, the seventh annual UK School
Games will be hosted in four Olympic Games venues next year giving
junior elite school-age athletes their first experience of the
atmosphere at ‘the Greatest Show on Earth’.
The plans are for three sports – swimming, athletics and cycling – to
take place in the Olympic venues proper next spring, while nine other
sports from the school games will be housed in the ExCeL Arena, an
exposition hall in London’s Docklands, which will house four combat
sports at the Olympic Games.
For the athletics event, it is thought the lower tier of the Olympic
stadium will be used, allowing around 30,000 spectators into the
event.
Through £750,000 of additional National Lottery funding provided this
year by Sport England, wheelchair basketball and rugby sevens were
included in the 2011 Sainsbury’s UK School Games, with the programme
now including cycling (mountain biking), athletics, badminton,
fencing, gymnastics, hockey, judo, swimming, table tennis and
volleyball with disability events in swimming, athletics, fencing and
table tennis.
Several Games records were broken on the third day of competition at
the 2011 Sainsbury’s UK School Games, yet the most notable was a new
world record mark at Ponds Forge International Sports Centre as
paralympic swimmer Jessica Applegate, an England East swimmer won the
MD 50m freestyle in 28.90 seconds, breaking the previous world leading
mark by 0.05 seconds.
Applegate, 15, from Great Yarmouth, said: ““That was a great race and
the highlight of my time here at the UK School Games having set a new
world record, I’m thrilled. The race just went to plan and I’ve
trained hard for this and to set such a fast time is great.”
The swimming event also saw Caleb Hughes set a new championship record
in winning the 1,500m freestyle in 15:54.19 minutes, while Nicole
Lough followed suit in the MD 100m breaststroke. There were also new
Games records for Danielle Lowe in the 100m butterfly, Alex Dunk in
the 200m freestyle and Camilla Hattersley in the 400m IM.
At Don Valley Stadium, Kelvin Tairou, 16, was the star of the show as
the Londoner re-wrote the School Games record books as he stormed to
100m gold. Having lowered his personal best to 10.70 seconds claiming
the English Under-17 title last month in Bedford, the teenager smashed
the championship record in 10.54 seconds. London claimed gold in the
4×300m girls before Birmingham stormed to victory in the 4×100m boys
to round off the first day of action at Don Valley Stadium. Elsewhere,
Gabby Down claimed gold in the wheelchair foil fencing and Joe Fraser
claimed the all-around boys title in the gymnastics.
UK SCHOOL GAMES: http://www.ukschoolgames.com/
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