ALEXANDRIA, Egypt, July 31 (Xinhua) -- British pentathlete and Tokyo Olympic champion Joseph Choong on Saturday grabbed the men's gold medal at the 2022 Pentathlon World Championships held by the Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne (UIPM) in Egypt's Mediterranean city of Alexandria.
Choong staged an outstanding performance in the 18-athlete final featuring horse riding, fencing, swimming and laser run, which combines both shooting and running.
He was the leader of the laser run race from beginning to end.
The British pentathlete expressed happiness with winning the world title, but his ambition doesn't stop there.
"To complete the set, I need to win the Europeans, then I will be world champion, Olympic champion and European champion. Then I also want to go and defend my gold medal in Paris 2024," Choong told Xinhua.
He said that after Tokyo he stopped training until January and then he came back and was "quite fortunate" here in Alexandria.
The 27-year-old pentathlete said he will take a break and start training again from the beginning of October, where he would like to work more on running.
"I am not running as well as I can. So, I need to improve small things if I want to 100-percent win a medal in Paris," he said.
The silver medal was won by Egyptian Mohamed El-Gendy, while the bronze medal went to Balazs Szep of Hungary.
"It was a long and exhausting season for me, but a successful one in the end. My horse riding needed improvement but I worked on it and today I managed to finish with a clear course. I am so happy to achieve the silver medal," 20-year-old El-Gendy told Xinhua.
"With hard training and constant improvement, I was confident I could make it to the podium," he added, dedicating the award to all his coaches and supporters, especially his mother.
His fencing coach Abdel-Rahman Adel said that they worked a lot on it until El-Gendy was able to achieve an advanced ranking position in the fencing competition of the championships.
"We joined a camp with Egypt's senior fencing team for a higher quality training. The medal achieved today is a result of a lot of efforts that have been exerted since the beginning of the year," the Egyptian coach added.
El-Gendy's elder brother and Tokyo 2020 Olympic silver medalist Ahmed El-Gendy, who has recently returned from an injury, ranked fifth.
Held from July 24 to 31, the Pentathlon World Championships Alexandria 2022 gathered dozens of male and female athletes from more than 40 countries and regions. ■
