Modern Pentathlon World Championships

Excelsior client Arthur Lanigan O Keeffe competed in the Modern Pentathlon world championships last week. At 17 years old he is technically a youth A athlete, not even a junior, but he more than held his own against the senior competition.

He started off with a P.B. 2.03.03 in the 200 metre swim, finishing 6th in his group of 32.

He then had a tough time in the fencing (he has only been fencing a year and this was always going to be a learning opportunity for him) finishing 29th out of 32. However, he did finish strongly with 8 hits out of his last 12 bouts.

He then had a great combined event of run and shoot, again finishing 6th out of his semi final group with a time of 11.21 for the 3 sets fo 5 target hits and 1km runs. This moved him up from 25th in his group to 18th. Overall he finished 44th out of 96 competitors on the day. You need to be in the top 36 to make the finals day.

That is a fantastic result for a first world championships, and we will look to build on that next month when we resume training.