POSTED: Sunday April 19th 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Modern Pentathlon: Cairo World Cup #2: Men’s Final

Omar and Amro El Geziry dominated the majority of the day

 
Cairo, 19 April 2009 – In an intense and exciting competition the El Geziry brothers, Omar and Amro of Egypt dominated the majority of the day, with Omar taking the lead from the fence through to the combined event. However, glory in front of a home crowd eluded the two brothers with Ondrej Polivka of Czech out performing the rest of field, having taken advantage when both brothers faulted in the shooting dropping places during the second set. Running hard in the final kilometre, Lithuanian duo Edvinas Krungolcas and Tadas Zemaitis took silver and bronze respectively. This caps an impressive weekend for Lithuania taking home a complete medal set in this World Cup after Laura Asadauskaite’s golden performance yesterday. 

At the start of the day in the fencing it was Omar El Geziry who impressed with his finesse on the pistes to take the lead with 1024 points for 29 victories/9 defeats. Following close in equal second was Justinas Kinderis (LTU) and Pavel Sekretev (RUS) both with 13V/4D (952 points). Third position was shared by four athletes - David Svoboda (CZE), Denis Cherkovskis (LAT), Tadas Zemaitis (LTU) and Amro El Geziry (EGY) all on 904 points. This was a tight group at the top, meaning that performances in swimming would start to separate the athletes.
Making the quick transition pool side it is home favourite and star of the pool Amro El Geziry (EGY) who did not disappoint. El Geziry completed the swim in an amazing 1:56.61 two body lengths ahead of Sung hyun Lee (KOR) and his brother Omar El Geziry (EGY). The crowd was ecstatic with the result especially learning that after two events the El Geziry brothers topped the leader board – Omar with 2355 points and Amro with 2308 points. Rounding out the top 3 was Lithuanian Justinas Kinderis on 2220 points.

Across to the Cairo Equestrian Centre, the men displayed their skills with three obtaining the perfect score of 1200 - Edvinas Krungolcas (LTU), Denis Cherkovskis (LAT) and Justinas Kinderis (LTU). Ondrej Polivka (CZE) the last rider in round 1 also had a great ride albiet the only injury to his score a 16 point time penalty resulting in 1184 points. As the last two riders of the day, the anticipation of the El Geziry brothers built in the crowd. Amro was first on the course, suffering only one knock down (20 penalty points) for a score of 1180 points. Omar, the final rider for the day, incurred one obstacle penalty and experienced a little difficulty to remain within the time to have 44 penalty points deducted resulting in a total 1156. But even a few penalties did not stop the domination by the El Geziry brothers, except to bring them closer overall. After three events Omar still held the top spot with 3508 points, while Amro had 3488. Kinderis remained their nearest rival with 3420 points, while Italian Pierpaolo Petroni moved up into fourth position (3340 points).

The brothers started with only 5 seconds separating them in the combined. Omar successful in his shots is out on the first 1km course increasing his lead. Amro follows with Petroni having had a fast shoot coming out in third ahead of Kinderis who staggered to fall back in fifth position. On the course Omar kept his distance in the lead returning to the range taking 4 shots (2 hit/2miss) before Amro also returned with Petroni on his shoulder. In a dramatic turn of events, with 5 fantastic shots Ondrej Polivka was first out of the range, moving from his sixth starting position into first.
Determined to keep this lead Polivka kept a solid pace, meanwhile Omar struggled with the shots to time out and enter back onto the course in third followed by Yahor Lapo (BLR) who moved through the field from 7th. Petroni fell back to 6th position while Marcin Horbacz (POL) climbed from 13th to fifth. Polivka returned for the final and third shot in the lead at least 70m in advance of Omar.  Into the third set of shoots, Omar again falters from which a number of competitors gain an advantage. Polivka again successful enters the course first, followed by Tadas Zemaitis (LTU) in second and Edvinas Krungolcas (LTU) in third. In the final 1km Krungolcas out does his fellow countryman, to overtake him with silver insight.  Across the line Polivka took the gold with a solid lead, Krungolcas for silver and Zemaitis completed the podium with bronze.  The fastest pentathlete in the field was Alvaro Sandoval of Mexico in 10:26.00.

Podium
1.      Ondrej Polivka (CZE) – 6088 points
2.      Edvinas Krungolcas (LTU) – 5976 points
3.      Tadas Zemaitis (LTU) – 5964 points
Full results and footage from the competition can be viewed on www.pentathlon.org
 
GENERAL INFORMATION
The 2009 World Cup Series of Modern Pentathlon now includes the new combined event format, adopted by the UIPM Congress in November 2008. The combined event is the continuous combination of the shoot and run disciplines, where athletes commence with 5 shots (in time limit of 70 seconds) followed by 1km run. This is repeated two further times for a total of 15 shots and 3km run. For more information on the combined event see www.pentathlon.org
 
So that fans around the world can watch these great athletes, and share in the excitement of the combined event, the UIPM will be broadcasting the finals live via internet TV on 18 and 19 April.  The broadcast will include highlights of the fence and swim events as well as live coverage of the riding and combined events.
 
The Cairo World Cup is the second in a series of 5 events in the following two months which will culminate in the World Cup final to be held in Rio de Janeiro 12-13 September. The first competition was held in Mexico 26-29 March.
 

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Keywords · UIPM · World Cup Cairo · Egypt

Name: Raelene Butler
Organization: UIPM UNION INTERNATIONALE DE PENTATHLON MODERNE
Email:
Phone: +377 9777 8555
URL: http://www.pentathlon.org

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