Unfortunately 66 athletes will have to wait another year for their shot at a World Championships Final as they failed to qualify. One of those 66 was surprising 2009 European Champion Ondrej Polivka (CZE), who crashed out of the Group of Death (Group A). Other top athletes to miss out of qualification today were Steffan Gerbhardt (GER), Nick Woodbridge (GBR), Yasser Hefny (EGY) and Pavlo Kirpulyanskyy (UKR).
Andrei Moiseev (RUS) led a good day for the Russians with their strong team of made up of 2008 World Champion Ilia Frolov (RUS), 2010 Champion Serguei Karyakin (RUS) and not to forget World #1 Aleksander Lesun (RUS) qualifying in convincing fashion. Any one of them could be standing on the podium on Sunday in front of their home crowd.
Pre event favourites David Svoboda (CZE) and 2009 World Champion Adam Marosi (HUN) had to work harder than expected to qualify for the final. They will have to increase their levels come Sunday if they are to win gold in the 1980 Olympic Stadium.
All the athletes who had a horror time at the European Championships and did not qualify like Justinas Kinderis (LTU), Edvinas Krungolcas (LTU) Sam Weale (GBR), Pavlo Tymoschenko (UKR) Thomas Daniel (AUT) all had a return to form today and made the top 12.
The Asians also performed very well, particular Jianli Guo (CHN) who was one of the stronger athletes in the tough Group A. The Korean trio of Woojin Hwang, Choon-huan Lee & Jin-woo Hong also performed well as did Andrey Soldatov (KAZ).
Full results can be found here:http://pentathlon.org/results/competition-results/results/pentathlon/740-uipm-senior-world-championships
Stay tuned for the Women’s Final tomorrow which can be seen live on Pentathlon.org.
