The 50th edition of the World Senior Championships (Chengdu, China) had two young athletes from Russia, in their first season in senior circuit, claiming the first two positions in the men's individual final. Both pentathletes impressed in their débuts this year in World Cup events - the winner, Serguei Karyakin, was 2nd in WC1 (Play del Carmen, Mexico), while Aleksander Lesun was 1st in WC4 (Budapest, Hungary) and also finished in impressive 5th position in World Cup Final (Moskva, Russia) and a podium in his first World Cup (WC3, London-UK).
Karyakin and Lesun proved the importance of a good fencing, and led already from the beginning. Lesun collected 1000 points with 24 victories out of 34 duels (Yasser Hefny from Egypt withdrew in first event). Karyakin ended the first event tied with Köllner with 21 victories, worthy 928 points.
Amro El Geziry was the fastest swimmer of the day and gained 1360 points with a time of 2:00.12 (previously he was 7h with 19 wins) and took the lead. Local hope Cao was the second top scorer (1348 points) and put himself in a good position for the next events (in the end of the day he was the fourth to cross the finish line, missing the podium). Karyakin moved to third position in the standings with the ninth best time and Lesun clocked the 17th time, losing the lead but still would be the 2nd last to perform in the riding event. Defending champion Marosi had a good swim after a disappointing fencing and was back on track, while Svoboda, the current European champion and who was second in World Championships in the last two years didn't manage to improve much his position after the 2nd event.
There were two flawless riders in the show jumping event, Karyakin and Mexican Oscar Soto. The perfect ride made Karyakin the provisional leader after 3 events. Lesun lost 80 points on his ride and dropped to 2nd in the standings, while Amro El-Geziry dropped to 3rd by losing 60 points.
Karyakin managed the lead in combined event with a good display (4th overall) and had a comfortable win, computing 5816 points; Lesun also had a good combined event (7th best time) and finished in second and Justinas Kinderis, Zhongrong Cao and Ondrej Polivka moved up to 3rd, 4th and 6th positions (they had the best times in CE of the day), with Krungolcas dropping to 5th position. Favourites Marosi and Svoboda finished the competition beyond the 10th position and Amro finished in the 20th position.
In the team competition, it would be expected Russia to win, however the line-ups are made before the semifinals and double Olympic champion Andrey Moiseev was selected to be part of the 3-men team while Karyakin was left out. Lithuania (Kinderis, Krungolcas and Makarovas) won the gold medal in the team competition, while the Czechs (Polivka, Sedlecky and Svoboda) finished in second position and Hungary (Marosi, Kasza and Nemeth) was third.
Click here for individual results.
Click here for team results.
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