Perin's School (Alresford) student Russell North retained his British Schools Biathlon title recently at Bath University.

Russell achieved success the hard way this year, as he competed in the National Inter-Counties Cross Country Championships at Wollaton Park, Nottingham, the day before representing Hampshire. This was a 6k cross country race.

The Biathlon consists of a 100m swim and 1000m track run. In the year 11 boys there were 27 competitors from 20 different schools from across Britain, all of whom had to qualify via regional championships.

The swim was in a 50m pool and Russell came third in a time of 59.15 - two seconds behind first place.

Going into the run he was 22 points behind the leader and needed to be four seconds ahead in the run to secure victory. He started strongly, hitting the front after the first 100m.

From there he pulled away from the other runners in his heat and finished in a time of 2mins 43.79secs. That gave him a points total of 2488, 50 more than his closest rival and friend Matt Fisher from Chester.

Russell claimed first place and also best run in his age group.

Hel also recently represented the Hampshire Schools team in the English Schools Cross Country Championships in Norwich. In Russell's age group, Intermediate Boys, the team came fourth in the Championships and were the first team to get all eight runners home.

The event concludes a hectic season for him.