These 78 women have now been cut to 36 of the best Pentathletes on the planet and will battle it out for the first gold medal of the Olympic season tomorrow at World Cup #1 in Charlotte, USA.
As is the case every event she enters into, World #1 and Olympic Champion Lena Schoneborn (GER) will be the favourite to stand on top of the podium come late Saturday afternoon.
However, the World Cup Final Champion will not have it all her own way, as several of the other top Pentathletes looked in fantastic form during qualification. The most impressive was Elodie Clouvel (FRA) and Laura Asadauskaite (LTU).
They both have worked incredibly hard on their fencing in the off season, and they have been rewarded with good results, as they both won their respective fencing groups yesterday. This, combined with their pet events, swimming (Clouvel) and combined (Asadauskaite), they will be hard to beat tomorrow.
World Champion Victoria Tereshuk (UKR) will like her chances to add to her World Championship medal last year as she was in top form yesterday after a tough preseason training in the mountains.
The same can be said for the 2 British girls Mhairi Spence and Heather Fell who spent the past month training at altitude getting themselves in top condition for the inner battle within their team to get into the 2 places for the London Olympic Games.
Qian Chen (CHN) says she is determined to get back into the medals, as she has not won an international medal since her 2009 World Championships triumph in London.
In addition to the battle at the top of the table, the girls will also be fighting for every position in order to get enough World Cup Series points to make the World Cup Final in Chengdu, which will be the key in their hopes to qualify for the Olympics.
You can watch all the action from the first fencing bout live on UIPM’s live webcast on Pentathlon.org.






RUS
UKR
HUN
AUT
GBR
LTU
FRA
CZE
CHN
ITA
BLR
EGY
KOR
GER
LAT
POL
IRL
BUL
USA
KAZ



