Pendle athlete Sara Burns has won a silver medal at the World Biathle Championships in South Africa.

Biathle is a sub sport of modern pentathlon invented to create opportunities for training the run and swim parts of pentathlon in real race conditions, but it has become a sport in its own right with its own European and World Championships.

It comprises of a run, swim and run without a break between the elements.

The Championships were held earlier this month at Zandvlei Lake in Cape Town with the event consisting of two 1500 metre runs sandwiched by a 200 metre swim in the lake.

Burns was competing in the Under 20 Women’s class and was delighted with second place in her first major championship although she admitted to misjudging her pace.

“I had a massive lead and let it go through lack of experience,” she revealed.

In windy conditions and with a strong current in the lake, she struggled with the change of rhythm after the second transition and “died” in the last run.

Now aged 20, after celebrating her birthday a fortnight ago, Burns started swimming with Rose Grove and then Burnley Bobcats around 10 years ago, while her running career began at Westholme School in Blackburn where she soon discovered that she was good enough to represent Blackburn with Darwen Schools and later Lancashire.

Before long, she joined Pendle Athletic Club where she honed her skills, and developed an interest in modern pentathlon through a friendship with Beth and Louise Highton and their father Martin.

In her mid-teens, she repres-ented the Lancashire swimming team at the English Schools’ Championships, winning a bronze medal in the freestyle relay, and made two appearances for Great Britain in the tetrathlon, once at Millfield School and once in Holland.

Tetrathlon is the final transition for juniors before taking on a full pentathlon and includes running, swimming, fencing and shooting but without the horse riding element.

She was recruited for the World Class Potential Programme in the pentathlon, but is unlikely to pursue that option as she doesn’t possess the necessary qualification to ride horses competitively.

The latest news that the modern pentathlon is likely to be omitted from the 2012 Olympics in favour of a running and shooting biathlon will reinforce her decision, and she has recently taken part in the ‘Girls for Gold’ initiative which is a national campaign to fast track girls into some of the less popular sports.

After undergoing a series of tests at Loughborough University, where she is a Psychology student, the experts reckon that she may be best suited to cycling which could point to a future in the triathlon.