Congratulations to Arthur Lanigan O’Keeffe and Natalya Coyle who won Gold and Silver medals in the Individual Men’s and Women’s competitions at the UIPM Pentathlon World Cup 4 in Sofia, Bulgaria last weekend.
Arthur started his final strongly with a 3rd place in the swimming phase and followed this up by winning the fencing section and picking up 2 points in the fencing bonus round. In the show jumping phase, Arthur protected his overall lead with a clean round, only losing 3 time faults. He started the final combined phase with an impressive 11 second start and kept a cool head the whole way through to take the gold medal.
The previous day, Natalya Coyle had also been successful picking up a hard fought for silver medal in the women’s event. Starting the day with a strong swim, she fenced superbly and won that phase with 27 victories. In the show jumping phase Natalya also left the poles standing, picking up a handful of time faults. This left her in 1st place for the Combined phase, starting with a 10 second lead. A lead she held until the 3rd shoot where Kate French of Great Britain overtook her. Natalya eventually crossed the line in second place and picked up her first individual medal in World Cup competitions.
Natalya and Arthur, together with Sive Brassil and Eilidh Prise, now head to the World Cup finals in Kazakhstan on 21st to 24th June and we wish them the best of luck there.
