The reigning world champion Seong Seung-min and her South Korean teammate Kim Sun-woo advanced to the final of the women’s modern pentathlon at the Paris Olympics on Saturday.
Seong finished fourth in Group A of the semifinals with 1,400 points, safely inside the top nine headed for Sunday’s final.
Later Saturday, Kim finished fifth in Group B with 1,396 points.
Athletes will start from a clean slate in the final, and only their points from Thursday’s fencing ranking round will be carried over.
The competition took place at the famed Chateau de Versailles in Versailles, west of Paris.
Seong, 21, emerged as a medal contender at this Olympics after capturing her first world title in June.
In equestrian show jumping to start the semifinals, Seong scored 293 points. Athletes began with 300 points and lost points for faults, refusals or time violations.
The bonus round for fencing featured 30-second bouts with fencers seeded by results of Thursday’s ranking round. The winner of each bout stayed on to face
the next athlete, and each win was worth two points. The victory for the final bout was worth four points.
Seong lost her lone bout to Elena Micheli of Italy. She failed to add to her ranking round point total of 225 points in fencing.
In 200-meter freestyle swimming, a time of 2:30 was worth 250 points, with one point added for every 0.5 second faster and one point deducted for every 0.5 second slower than the target time.
Seong posted the fourth-fastest time in swimming with 2:12.44, which netted her 286 points.
With 804 total points, Seong was in fourth place in Group A entering the final event, the laser run. It combined the running of five 600m laps and four stops at a laser pistol shooting range. The target time of 13:20 was worth 500 points, with one point added for every second faster and one point deducted for every second slower than the target.
Seong picked up 596 points in the laser run after finishing her race in 11:44.13.
Seong said afterward she was not as sharp with her shooting as she w
ould have liked. At her second shooting stop, Seong needed 11 attempts to get her required five hits, which cost her 20.4 seconds. She made up for it by going 5-for-5 at her final stop.
“I was worried about show jumping but I did well there. But shooting didn’t go so well,” Seong said. “The crowd noise was something else. It hit me that this was the Olympics after all. And I happened to shoot right next to a French athlete. So I was a bit distracted.”
Seong said having competed in this environment should help her for the final on Sunday.
“I will make sure I won’t make mistakes in the final,” Seong said. “My primary goal was to reach the final and finish my show jumping without getting hurt. I took care of those today. I will try to be better at shooting tomorrow.”
In Group B action, Kim scored a perfect 300 points in show jumping and lost to Laura Heredia of Spain in her lone fencing bout, which left her with 220 points in fencing.
Kim posted the fourth-fastest time in swimming with 2:14.44 and scored 28
2 points.
At 802 points overall, Kim was in fourth place with only the laser run remaining. She finished ninth in the laser run with 594 points, after posting a time of 11:46.64.
It gave her 1,396 points overall, sending her to the final with room to spare.
South Korea has never had a female medalist in Olympic modern pentathlon. At the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, Jun Woong-tae won bronze in the men’s competition. Jun and teammate Seo Chang-wan are scheduled to compete in the men’s final later Saturday.
Source: Yonhap News Agency