Asian Modern Pentathlon Championship among men's teams has sensationally finished.
It was the first time in Kazakhstan pentathlon history, when the title of champion of the continental Championship was won by the team of Kazakhstan.
After the competitions in fencing and swimming among men Leonid Zimarev and Pavel Ilyashenko took the second and the third place respectively. Chinese athlete Janli Go was leading.
On October 2, the Kazakh team leader Pavel Ilyashenko showed a bad riding performance and dropped to fourth position. The combine event (running and shooting) has clearified the situation. There was nobody equal to the Kazakhstan athlete - Pavel beat all his rivals with a distinct advantage .
“ The horse created a lot of problems, – Pavel admitted in an exclusive interview to sk-sport.kz after the event. - I did not know what happened to the horse, because in the first round, it was ok. I hoped, that our Almaty`s horse could help me, but it seemed to be tired. It could not stand the second round. In the end, I flew to fourth place. But it was necessary to fight on. I suspected that I would have problems with shooting. And I did. But I did well at running. The result was good. I'm happy!”
As a result, Pavel Ilyashenko scored the highest points - 5792 and became the champion of Asia in the individual competition. Japanese athlete Shohei Imamoto with 5780 points was the second. The third place went to Chinhva Jeong from South Korea (5748 points).
The teamwork of Kazakh team has also proved successful - the first time the team of Kazakhstan has risen to the highest step of the podium of Asian Championship. Our men's team comprised of Pavel Ilyashenko, Rustem Sabirkhuzin and Andrei Soldatov gained 16,728 points and was ahead of teams of Kyrgyzstan (16528 points) and China (16488 points).
Women's team comprised of Yulia Kolegova, Xenia Alexandrova and Dariya Khalzova took the third place and were behind the teams of China and Korea.
The head coach of Kazakhstan Vadim Chudnovskiy, of course, was pleased with the performance of their charges:
- Pasha is the champion today. I have some points of criticism to him, of course. But, as the saying goes, nobody judges the winners. The whole team performed well. I have no complaints to anyone of athletes. Leonid Zimarev perfomed nice. I feel that he will join the national team. I see good dynamics in Kazakhstan's pentathlon and good prospects. I would like to express our gratitude to the President of the Federation Berik Imashev. And a special thanks to our general sponsor - "Samruk -Kazyna". There would be nothing happened without their support. Modern pentathlon requires pharmacology and equipment, travellings and competitions. All this is impossible without good sponsors. Therefore, we are very grateful to "Samruk- Kazyna" for the assistance.