Isabella Moon has spent the Australian summer competing in Biathlon events against some of the world’s best athletes on European ski slopes. Biathlons combine fast, precision skiing with timed shooting challenges.
A competitor at an incredible three competitions before representing Australia at the Youth Olympics in Lausanne, Switzerland, Isabella came away with strong results, despite a fractured finger, which interfered with her skiing and shooting performance.
A proud member of the thirty-three person Australian Youth Olympic Team that competed in January, Isabella placed seventy-sixth out of ninety-three in the Women’s 10 kilometre Biathlon, where she shot 3:5:0:2 and seventy-seventh out of ninety-seven starters in the Women’s 6 kilometre Sprint, where she shot 4:2. Isabella’s Australian team of two girls and two boys placed twenty-third out of twenty-four in the Biathlon Mixed Relay.
In the lead-up to this high-profile event, Isabella competed in two events in Austria: the Austrian Cup Sprint event, where she placed fourteenth, then the Alpen Cup, placing thirty-eighth out of fifty nine. She then travelled to Slovenia for the International Biathlon Union Junior Cup 1, where the sixteen-year-old raced in the U23 category, finishing eighty-ninth out of one hundred and eighteen starters. In this competition, Isabella was the best-ranked Australian and the youngest Australian female to compete. Finally, Isabella competed in the Italian Cup, one of the few races in which she raced in the correct age group, coming in just two minutes and forty-two seconds behind the leader to finish twenty-second out of forty-two competitors in the U17 Sprint. She finished twentieth out of forty in the U17 Pursuit event.
Isabella’s resilience and positive attitude are an example to all Meriden girls, and the school community congratulates her and looks forward to hearing further news of her bright future on the slopes.
