Modern Pentathlon at Paris 2024 Olympic Games: Elgendy (EGY) wins Men’s Semi-final A

Ahmed Elgendy of Egypt continued his impressive start to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games by finishing 1st in Semi-final A and qualifying for the Men’s Final.

Elgendy (EGY) set a new Olympic record of 1,516 points after overcoming the setback of a patchy Riding performance. He started 5th in the Laser Run but moved past his fellow leaders to cross the line first in front of almost 16,000 jubilant spectators.

They were mostly jubilant because both France athletes successfully negotiated the Semi-final. Jean-baptiste Mourcia (FRA) advanced with a superb Laser Run while Valentin Prades (FRA) protected his position and finished comfortably in 9th behind world No.1 Csaba Bohm of Hungary.

The other qualifiers from Semi-final A were Alexandre Dallenbach of Switzerland, Emiliano Hernandez of Mexico, Matteo Cicinelli of Italy, Pavels Svecovs of Latvia and Fabian Liebig of Germany.

Martin Vlach of Czechia set a new Olympic Laser Run record of 9min 47.46sec, almost breaking his own world record – although he did not manage to reach the Final after an intensively competitive Semi-final.

Riding began with a perfect score of 300 for one Olympic debutant, Georgiy Boroda-Dudochkin of Kazakhstan, and a brave act of survival by Phurit Yohuang, who became the first-ever Olympic pentathlete from Thailand.

No athletes were eliminated in Riding and Elgendy (EGY) suffered the only refusal, leading to the loss of 33 points. Bohm (HUN) put himself back in contention after a disappointing Fencing Ranking Round and there were also 300 scores for Dallenbach (SUI), Svecovs (LAT), Liebig (GER) and Vlach (CZE).

After yesterday’s Ranking Round inside a packed North Arena, the Bonus Round took place in a totally different environment in the grounds of the Palace of Versailles. And the atmosphere was even more charged with the venue almost full.

Bohm (HUN) was the first to achieve two wins, but then Mourcia (FRA) delighted the crowd by knocking the world No.1 off the piste. The stars of the Bonus Round were Hernandez (MEX) and Prades (FRA), each of whom claimed five scalps with the towering Frenchman going all the way to the last bout and defeating Elgendy (EGY) with another decisive lunge.

Swimming saw another burst of focused determination by world champion and world record-holder Bohm (HUN), who narrowly defeated Elgendy (EGY) in his heat in a time of 1min 59.76sec. Dallenbach (SUI) grabbed the top time of 1:58.28 and Andres Torres of Ecuador and Cicinelli (ITA) also broke 2min.

Svecovs (LAT) started Laser Run in pole position with Dallenbach (SUI) only 2secs behind. The chasing pack included Cicinelli (ITA), Prades (FRA) and Elgendy (EGY) with Bohm (HUN) now in 9th overall.

At the second shoot Mourcia (FRA) made a decisive move to push Todor Mihalev of Bulgaria out of the top nine, and that was the end of the drama as the leaders carefully protected their status.

Vlach’s time of 9:47.46 was only narrowly quicker than that of Mourcia (FRA), who timed 9:48.28, and Shuai Luo of China who also broke through the 10min barrier.