LASER Run is a sport which doesn’t garner much attention, but two locals have been selected in the national squad for the sport and are about to compete in the world championships in Lisbon, Portugal.

Zoe Addinsall (Under-17) and Matilda Mason (Under-15) have been selected from the national modern pentathlon squad to compete in the world championships, as laser run is one of the five disciplines that form an event.

Modern pentathlons have each competitor compete in running, shooting, swimming, show jumping and fencing with the event introduced into the Olympics in 1912.

With laser run each competitor must run at their fastest speed over a 600m cross country course and upon reaching the shooting range, they must hit a target that is 10m away five times within 50 seconds before moving on to do it all again up to five times.

The winner is the first across the finish line in the final run stage.

Because laser run is only one part of Modern Pentathlon, the athletes must train for all disciplines equally so as not to have a ‘weak’ discipline.

The girls have been training for these championships ever since they were selected in the team back in April after they each won their age group national title the same month.

“We had a training camp up in Coffs Harbour at the national centre at the start of September with some Zoom calls from our coaches and a training held in Melbourne, but we have to conduct a lot of our training on our own,” Addinsall said.

“For most sports you only need to train for one discipline, but we must be on top of so many different aspects and we have to train different muscle groups for each discipline.

“We run as fast as we can for 600m then stop at the shooting range/stage where we must hold the pistol at full arm extension and shoot at the target, then touch the pistol to the table between each shot and do it a fast as possible.”

“The top exponents aim for each shot/table touch in one second each,” Mason said.

The two girls won their first national titles back in November 2021 and then recorded their second titles in April this year to have an outstanding six-month period leading into their first world championships this week.