European youths savour nine days of competition in Krakow (POL)

More than 180 of Modern Pentathlon’s best up-and-coming talents gathered in Krakow (POL) for the European Youth Championships (U19/U17) from July 5-15.

For organisers, the competition doubled as a venue test for the 2023 European Games in the same city, where Modern Pentathlon will join the programme for the first time and Europe’s leading senior athletes will aim to qualify for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

Athletes from 21 countries took part across the nine days, with 12 countries represented on the podium sharing 42 medals and France leading the way with two individual golds. Matteo Bovenzi of Italy set a new Swimming world record of 1min 51.21sec (200m pool).

For the first time, UIPM enabled a refugee athlete to compete as a member of the UIPM Refugee Team (URT) – Naya Fares, who is originally from Syria and living in Germany.

And the global governing body also continued its support to Ukraine by allowing athlete Platon Iefremenko (UKR) to compete under the UIPM neutral flag.

The new individual champions are:

• U19 women: Lucie Hlavackova of Czech Republic
• U19 men: Etienne Clergeau (FRA)
• U17 women: Emma Meszaros of Hungary
• U17 men: Karl Furderer (FRA)

Janusz Peciak OLY, UIPM Executive Board Member for Sport, said: “The atmosphere of the competition was great. The young athletes showed a lot of enthusiasm and passion, friendship and high performance.

“Many athletes improved their own records. Almost all coaches were very pleased with the great organisation and high-level competition despite very bad weather.”

UIPM President Dr Klaus Schormann attended the competition and inspected facilities as well as meeting the Mayor of Krakow, Jacek Majchrowski.

All results are available here.