World Cup #2: Men’s Competition preview

After 36 Women qualified for the UIPM Modern Pentathlon World Cup #2 Final yesterday, the Men will now take centre stage at the Police Academy in the Egyptian capital Cairo as they battle it out with the aim of progressing from their semi-final Groups.

All LIVE scores can be found on www.pentathlon.org

Twitter #PentaWC2

France have come with their big guns and the onus will be on them to prove their worth. World No.2 Valentin Prades, Champion of Champions winner Christopher Patte and the fleet-footed Valentin Belaud have each got in them to win the competition outright.

Prades told us, “We are very relaxed coming here. The aim is to get into the Final and then see what happens. We all want to do well especially as the Hungarians and Russians are not here.”

As several of the big names have not travelled to Cairo, many others will be viewing this competition as a great opportunity to gain valuable points towards the World ranking and points in the race for qualification to the World Cup Final in Florida, USA, 6-8 June.

With the chance to impress on home soil, brothers Amro and Omar El-Geziri (pictured, above) have both quality on the pistes and in the pool so will have high hopes of performing after training at altitude in Colorado earlier this year.

Manuel Padilla from Mexico, who shone at the Acapulco Open and is ultra-fast around the combined will be one of those casting on eye on qualification and a podium finish after that. Cuba’s Ders Lester has been developing fast and is likely to have a big impact in this event. It will be interesting to see how China’s Zhaohong Cai fares, the London 2012 silver medallist had a disappointing year last season and will want to show what he can do.

German duo Stefan Kollner and Alexander Nobis will fancy their chances, as will Italy’s classy fencer Pierpaolo Petroni and his teammate, 2012 European Champion Riccardo de Luca. Pavlo Tymoshchenko, a winner at World Cup #3 last year, and Dmitry Kirpulyanskyy will want to replicate the form that the Ukrainian women have shown so will also be in the running for honours.

A wide open competition will make for an entertaining day as the men jostle for positions across both qualification groups. Group A begin with the fence at 9.00 with Group B taking to the pool at 10.00 before swapping over.

You can follow all the live results on www.pentathlon.org

Full schedule:

• Wednesday 2 April – Women’s Qualification
• Thursday 3 April – Men’s Qualification
• Friday 4 April – Women’s Final
• Saturday 5 April – Men’s Final
• Sunday 6 April – Mixed Relay