The Secret World Champion :: Wessex Scene Online

The Secret World Champion

7th December 2007
Simon Webb

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Ask any senior member of the Athletic Union to name the highest achieving member of the University Student Body and they will likely name Sailors, Riflmen and women or Ultimate Frisbee players. All are wrong.

Southampton University boasts a World Champion who is unique though. She is the first ever two time female world champion in her chosen discipline, the Hoop Trundle.

At the tender age of 18, Emma Guthrie made headlines world wide as she stromed to her second successive World Title, a feat only achieved by one other athlete the year before in the male competition.

As Head of School at the Kings School, Ely, Guthrie was one of the scholars invited to take part in the anual event, held behind the Cathedral in Ely, Cambridgeshire.

The School is one of the oldest surviving schools in the world, having been in existence for in excess of 300 years. Scholarships are awarded to the highest performing accademic students after Year 11 and once a year the Scholars compete in the Hoop Trundle.

Facing stiff competition from the likes of England Hockey player Vanessa Roberts and her close friend Stephanie Vicat, she did well to secure the title two times in a row. The pebbled streets of Ely are notorious for causing career ending injuries and achieving consistency in the heats and finals is nearly impossible.

With this momentous achievement behind her Guthrie hopes to rationalise the rules and codes of the sport and promote it world wide. It has been hard for her to balance her athletic career with her medical one, she is a fifth year Medic at Southampton University, but so far all is going well and there are hopes harboured for a World Hoop Trundle Championship to be held in 2018 - once a World Governing Body has been established.