By Anna Boulet-Alips, Year 12
In June 2023, twelve members of LGB’s track and field team will travel to Trabzon, Turkey in order to compete in the International School Sport Federation’s Championships. For months now, they have organized selections, training sessions, and meetings in order to assemble the best team of athletes possible. The coaches Jérémy Beyer, Loris Legras, and Baptiste Fieux have designed an optimal team of six girls and six boys, each trained for a certain event. This interview is complete thanks to the help of Gioia Hollingsworth, a competitive member of the team.
Would you mind telling us more about the 2023 ISF championships?
So this organization selects the best international school in each country willing to participate, and together we compete over almost every existing event in modern track and field! These schools have an extremely high level of skill, and some of these competitors even run for Junior Olympics.
What results do you expect from the championships in Turkey?
Obviously I believe we are going to win, but I’m biased, so to be as objective as possible, I think that we have really strong athletes on our team, especially for the men’s team, and we are all passionate and motivated to do well for ourselves and our country!
What sort of training are you focusing on whilst working towards the championships?
We do a lot of “over training”, where we run distances that are longer than our assigned events (for example we train 480 meters instead of 400). This helps improve our respiratory and circulatory systems, as well as our muscles. We also do separate work on technique and form, such as perfecting our start in blocks, improving our stance during runs, and resisting lactic acid. All of these separate things being improved can have a great positive impact on our times (track) and distances (field)!
What will be your biggest challenge in the championships?
I think that just like every athletics athlete will tell you, it’s the mental challenge. It is my honest belief that track and field is the most difficult mental sport there is out there. Hundreds of people watching you, no team to back you up, seeing the hurdles before you, waiting for the gunshots,… all of these things are part of what make this sport so difficult to “hang on to”.
What do you look forward to the most during the ISF championships this year?
Definitely meeting all the teams (we have a “Nation’s Night” where we all meet and conglomerate together the day before the competition starts) and just the whole experience honestly.
It may not seem like it, but to us; this is our own version of the Olympics, this is a make or break type of competition, which will most definitely stay in our minds forever!
Meet the track & field team taking LGB to the 2023 ISF Championships
