Orkney 2025: Six new Sarnian faces to watch

It is all eyes on Orkney this week as a relatively new-look Team Guernsey heads to Scotland for the 2025 Island Games.

Some of Guernsey sport’s leading performers helped the home team top the medals table two years ago, but there are lots of fresh faces in the 123 travelling athletes this time around.

Here are six Games debutants to keep an eye on over the course of the week.

Theo Le Tissier - athletics

Theo Le Tissier just keeps getting faster.

The 16-year-old is lined up for the individual 200m and potentially both relays for his Island Games bow at Orkney 2025, having this season made a real case to be considered Guernsey’s top on-island sprinter.

His preparations for the season had not been ideal – he had been sidelined by glandular fever over the winter.

But he has put aside his footballing commitments and focused on athletics training, which has helped him improve dramatically and lower his personal bests significantly every month.

Le Tissier first ran Island Games B standards for both the 100m and 200m in April with the deadline fast approaching.

In the last Aztec Track and Field Series fixture before the Games, he ran 22.22sec. for 200m and 11.10sec. for 100m. He stole Gibraltar 2019 gold medallist Joe Chadwick’s Guernsey U17 record in the former and finished just outside it for the latter.

He now heads to Orkney as a potential individual finalist in a men’s sprint quintet where all four Guernsey-based athletes are debuting.

Having only made his big athletics breakthrough this season, competing at the Games is a massive milestone for him and could help spur him onto even greater things in the future.

‘I’ve never done Nationals or anything like that, so to go to something this big at this point is a pretty good experience, really,’ he said.

Hannah Kennedy - triathlon

Look back two years and Hannah Kennedy was in the Guernsey 2023 team as a backstroke swimmer.

Now, at 18, she will be Guernsey’s strongest individual female triathlete in Orkney.

The youngster transitioned to being a pure triathlete shortly after the home Island Games and it is hard to argue with the results – she was winning head-to-heads with individual Guernsey 2023 medallist Amy Critchlow less than a year later.

When she made her step up to the Olympic distance at Pembroke last summer, she dominated the women’s race and finished in the top five overall.

Alongside this all she has been competing in British Triathlon’s Super Series, where she has been holding her own against the very best in her age group. This came together with taking second U20 and making the overall top 10 in last year’s British Sprint Championships at Mallory Park.

Having opened this year’s Super Series account by making an A final and finished third overall at the Grandes Rocques Super Sprint, she will be a strong individual contender in her first Games triathlon.

That Guernsey are the defending champions in the women’s team event only adds to the excitement.

‘To think in 2023 I was swimming in the pool, I’ve had so much change in two years and representing Guernsey in a different sport is incredible,’ she said.

Chloe Bown - swimming

Chloe Bown has a big week ahead for her Island Games debut in Orkney – but she has earned it.

The Mount Kelly swimmer is a newer face to the island’s top level but brimming with potential.

She will be Guernsey’s top-ranked swimmer for seven individual events in Orkney and, in each of them, has swum within the time required to win gold at the last Island Games.

Bown has been training with the Guernsey Swimming Club when possible and has made a real impression over the last year or so, setting multiple Island records.

She got her first taste of large-scale representation at last winter’s Malta Invitational Games, where she won five golds and set three Guernsey records.

She is now a dominant presence in Guernsey’s record books, including being the one to beat in all three of the individual medley events.

Bown’s more recent successes include a South West Regional crown in the 400m freestyle.

Ahead of the youngster buoying her island’s individual and relay medal hopes in Orkney, GSC head coach Heather Jackson called her ‘a great role model’ and credited her inspirational effect on others.

‘It’s nice to have her, because even in training, she provides motivation and is someone to look up to – “I want to be like that”,’ she said.

Mark Le Page - cycling

The Orkney 2025 cycling squad is dramatically different to the one that competed at the home Island Games.

In fact, there is not a single rider returning.

But Mark Le Page is one of the most promising competitors in this new-look cycling squad, having been a prolific winner of mountain biking events this year.

This started with January’s Cyclocross Series race at Blanchelande College, after which he said of his elevated position as potentially the island’s top senior Games mountain biker: ‘I can’t believe it’.

‘It won’t hit me quite yet, not until the [Island Games] day, but it’s crazy to think that.

‘I never thought I’d get this far, really.’

He has been among the select few Guernsey riders competing in the National Cross-Country Series, notably claiming a 14th-place finish among the expert class at Wales’ Margam Park in April. He has also tuned up with a fifth and seventh in the popular SouthernXC races.

Among other victories, he got an ideal send-off when he won the latest Mountain Bike Cross-Country Series round, a drawn-out affair on the Island Games course at L’Ancresse, by nearly 4min.

Medha Vallapureddy - badminton

Medha Vallapureddy is in a privileged position for Orkney 2025.

She is being entrusted with the pivotal role of water carrier at the opening ceremony, being one of the youngest athletes in Team Guernsey.

But she could also pack a punch on the badminton court, going in as Guernsey’s top-ranked women’s singles player after managing to win the Island title last November at just 14 years of age.

She has picked up where she left off and continued to win titles at an age-group level in 2025. This includes her singles gold at April’s prestigious Warwickshire U17 Bronze.

Beyond her individual status, she will be playing her part for an island that has managed to obtain team medals.

She partners Carys Batiste in the women’s doubles and David Trebert in the mixed.

If nothing else, a player as young as Vallapureddy has plenty of experience to gain from competing at senior Games level.

‘I’ve got an amazing team and they’re all really cooperative, so I think this will be a really amazing experience for me,’ she said.

Conor McKenna - golf

Conor McKenna enjoyed a stellar summer on home soil last year and will be hoping this is a golden one in Orkney.

It was an incredible 2024 for the teenager as he became the youngest Island men’s golf champion at just 17, as he beat Jeremy Nicolle in one of the best finals in memory at the 41st hole.

He went on to beat Jersey’s Matthew Parkman, who had never previously lost in four Channel Islands Championship finals, convincingly 8 & 7 to claim the CI crown.

Just for good measure, McKenna completed a clean-sweep by winning both the Guernsey and CI junior titles too and added the Island strokeplay championship title to his CV with an extraordinary performance against the elements in the Investec Trophy.

Going into this 2025, he admitted it was going to be more of a ‘working year’ for him as he prepares to head to college in New York next month, but the Island Games was always one of his main targets and he has hit form at the right time, recently becoming Royal Guernsey club champion having also equalled the L’Ancresse course record of 63 this summer.

‘I looked at it and I said to my dad, “yeah, that suits me that”. In those areas it’s completely different,’ said McKenna of the courses and probable conditions in Orkney.

‘I think will be a great trip.’

Our team will be in Orkney aiming to bring you the best coverage of Guernsey’s Games, with updates across our social channels and at guernseypress.com throughout.

We will also be publishing our daily ‘Games Today’ podcast each evening, featuring interviews, reaction and insights from across Orkney 2025.

Follow our podcast feed here, and find us on Facebook, Instagram, X and Bluesky.

And, of course, look out for comprehensive coverage in our print edition from Monday.