Biathle News
GB women's quartet book places in final of Cairo World Cup posted by Steve Ballinger on18-03-2010
Great Britain will have four women pentathletes in the final of the second World Cup of the year in Cairo on Saturday (20 March).
Katy Burke, Mhairi Spence, Katy Livingston and Freyja Prentice all qualified safely from today's semi-finals.
"It was mission accomplished as far as our performance target for the semi-finals was concerned today,” said Jan Bartu, Pentathlon GB Performance Director.
“It was a very good day for the British girls with all four qualifying for the finals, as expected,” he added.
Burke and Spence competed in the same heat, with Burke scoring 896 points in the fencing discipline and following that up with a swim of 2:16.2. Spence scored 826 points in the fence and swam 2:21.2.
In the other heat, teenager Prentice, competing at only her third World Cup, recorded a personal best time in the swim of 2:22.4, despite swimming in an open air pool in strong winds. She followed that up with 784 points from the fence.
Beijing 2008 Olympian Livingston, who won the World Cup in Cairo two years ago, swam 2:18.4 and fenced 896.
All four safely negotiated the combined run/shoot to book places in Saturday"s final.
The attention now turns to tomorrow’s (Friday) men’s semi-finals, where Beijing 2008 Olympian Nick Woodbridge is joined by GB team-mates David Atkinson, Steven Mason and Russell North in bidding for places in Sunday’s final.
For further information, please contact Steve Ballinger in the Pentathlon GB press office at Matchtight Ltd on 07765 071683 or visit the website www.pentathlongb.org
Pentathlon GB Notes for Editors
- Modern Pentathlon is one of Britain’s most successful Olympic sports. The sport for women was introduced to the Olympics at Sydney 2000 and since then Britain’s women have won four Olympic medals - or 66 per cent of the medals available to them. Steph Cook won gold and Kate Allenby bronze at Sydney 2000, with Georgina Harland winning bronze at Athens in 2004 and Heather Fell winning Olympic silver at the Beijing 2008 Games.
- Great Britain had the maximum complement of four pentathletes – Heather Fell, Katy Livingston, Sam Weale and Nick Woodbridge – competing at the Beijing Olympic Games. It was one of only 10 nations to have the full complement of four pentathletes in Beijing. Four British women achieved the qualifying standard for Beijing, but only two could compete, while Weale and Woodbridge became the first men to represent Great Britain in the modern pentathlon at an Olympic Games since Atlanta 96.
- The sport of modern pentathlon has traditionally consisted of five disciplines - shooting, fencing, swimming, riding and running. However, at the end of 2008 the international federation, the International Modern Pentathlon Union (UIPM), decided to replace two of the individual elements – the shooting and running – with a combined run/shoot.
- The new combined event format sees athletes first compete in fencing – when they take-on each other athlete in the field to one hit with each bout taking a maximum of one minute; a 200m freestyle swim; show jumping – when athletes get to meet their horses just 20 minutes before going into the riding arena; then the combined run/shoot – where athletes run 60m, shoot at five targets in up to 70 seconds, run 1k, shoot at another five targets in 70 seconds, run 1k, shoot at a further five targets in 70 seconds and then finish off with a final 1k run. All of the disciplines take place in one day.
- Each performance during the day is converted into pentathlon points and the winner is the athlete to amass the most points at the end of the day. The start of the run/shoot is staggered so the athlete leading the field after the earlier disciplines starts first. This means the first athlete to cross the finish line is the winner.
- Pentathlon GB at Olympic and youth level is a beneficiary of the Lottery funded World Class Programmes (WCP). The Programmes focus on performance sport with the aim of achieving sporting excellence on the world stage. Further information can be found on the UK Sport website at www.uksport.gov.uk and Sport England’s website at www.sportengland.org <http://www.sportengland.org/>
- Pentathlon GB also receives support from M&S as part of the FTSE-BOA Initiative.
- Further information can be found on the Pentathlon GB website at www.pentathlongb.org
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