Three more Brits through to finals day at 2023 Pentathlon World Championships as University of Bath prepares to host Super Sunday
Three Pentathlon GB athletes, including defending champion Joe Choong, will line up in a top-class men’s final at the University of Bath on Sunday when gold medals are decided at the UIPM Pentathlon World Championships 2023.
Charlie Brown, a Sports Management and Coaching student at the University, showed no signs of nerves in his first senior World Championships as he produced a strong swim and laser-run to confidently progress through Semi-Final A.
It was tighter for Choong and fellow Bath graduate Myles Pillage during a sprint finish to Semi-Final B but they were able to emerge with the all-important top-nine placing.
That means there will be seven Brits for the home crowd to cheer on in Sunday’s finals after Kerenza Bryson, Olivia Green, Jess Varley and Emma Whitaker progressed through the women’s semi-finals on Friday.
Egyptian trio Mohanad Shaban, Ahmed Elgendy and Mohamed Elgendy – all medallists at major championships in the past two years – also progressed to a high-quality men’s final, as did 2016 and 2019 World Champion Valentin Belaud of France.
The stage is now set for a Super Sunday at the Team Bath Sports Training Village, with the women’s medals being decided from 9am and the men’s champion being crowned from 2.30pm. Remaining tickets are available to buy at wch2023.org.
Hungary’s Bence Demeter led Semi-Final A overnight after recording 23 victories in Friday’s fencing ranking round, one more than 2023 UIPM World Cup Final champion Shaban.
They maintained those positions after the swim although just 12 seconds separated the first seven athletes going into the laser-run. Rapid times of 2:01.21 in the pool from Matteo Cicinelli – matched by Tokyo 2020 Olympic silver-medallist Ahmed Elgendy – and 2:01.55 from Brown put the Italian and Brit in the middle of the pack along with Germany’s Marvin Dogue.
An enthralling run-shoot saw Brown show great maturity to maintain his grip on the all-important ninth place before pushing through the field on the last lap to come home safely in the group of qualifiers, led home by Mexico’s Emiliano Hernandez and Martin Vlach of the Czech Republic. The latter produced the fastest laser-run of the round to move up from 12th.
The afternoon’s action saw Choong and Mohamed Elgendy, gold and silver-medallists respectively at the 2022 World Championships, sit top of the leaderboard with Germany’s Patrick Dogue after the fencing ranking round.
South Korea’s Jihun Lee picked up 10 points in the fencing bonus round which, along with a solid swim, gave him a two-second advantage over Choong going into the laser-run. Pillage was one of four swimmers to go below two minutes in the pool, setting the second-fastest time behind Switzerland’s Alexandre Dallenbach, to start in sixth.
With the final less than 24 hours away, athletes tried to conserve energy in the laser-run but as the field bunched up it led to a nail-biting dash to the line. Just two seconds separated Roman Popov in fifth from 10th-placed Dogue, who missed out on the final by the tightest of margins.
Elgendy took first place, followed by Korean duo Woongtae Jun and Lee, while Pillage and Choong were seventh and ninth respectively.
Click here to buy tickets for Finals Day and the mixed relay competition on Bank Holiday Monday.
