The 2018 Summer Youth Olympic Games, held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, will conclude on Thursday, with Egypt adding nine more medals to its shelves following Rawan Ayman’s silver.
Egypt will have a chance to win more Olympic medals, when the national Futsal team meets Argentina on Wednesday competing for the bronze medal.
This Summer Youth Olympic Games has witnessed the best achievements of different Egyptian athletes in the history of the Youth Olympics, which started in 2010. The Buenos Aires’ is the event’s third edition.
With this number of medals, Egypt is now at the forefront of the Arab world, followed by Morocco, which ranked 41st with one gold medal and two silvers, then Tunisia (45th) with one gold, one silver, and one bronze.
Algeria ranked 63rd with two silver medals, while the UAE won one silver medal ranking 75th globally and fifth among Arab countries.
The Egyptian achievement came despite the fact that this edition’s mission was not the largest in the history of its participation. It included only 68 players.
The Egyptian mission has so far won nine medals. This includes two gold medals by Salma Ayman and Ahmed El-Gendy in the modern pentathlon, two silvers for Naema Saied in weight lifting, and Rawan Ayman in the hammer competitions.
Egypt’s five bronze medals were grabbed by Mazen Al-Arabi in fencing, Abdel Rahman Sameh in swimming, Eyad Adel in Taekwondo, Abdullah Galal in weight lifting, and Ahmad Mahmoud in wrestling.
The Egyptian delegation participated in the first Youth Olympics held in 2010 in Singapore with a mission of 74 players in 17 different games. Egypt then won six medals, including two golds, two silvers, and two bronzes.
In the 2014 Nanjing Youth Olympic Games, Egypt’s mission included 83 players in 20 games, marking the largest mission in its history. It won eight medals, two gold medals, one silver medal, and five bronze medals.
In the following lines, we will present a brief of the modern pentathlon.
The modern pentathlon has been a core sport of the Olympic Games since 1912 in Stockholm. Since then, it was never removed. A team event was added to the Olympic Games in 1952 and discontinued in 1992.
The modern pentathlon is an Olympic sport that comprises of five different events; fencing, freestyle swimming, equestrian show jumping, and a final combined event of pistol shooting, and cross-country running. The player gets points according to the score he gains in each contest, and the players are ranked according to the points they get.
The pistol shooting involves using a 4.5 mm air pistol, in a standing position, from 10 metre distance aiming at a stationary target. This involves a combination of running and shooting events, so that each competitor runs three 1,000 metre laps, each prefaced by hitting five targets with a pistol.
Fencing is fought with epee swords. Each competitor has a bout against every other competitor in the competition. Each round lasts for three minutes.
The swimming event is a freestyle race over 200 metres for both the men’s and women’s competitions. Athletes are seeded in heats according to their personal best time.
Equestrian show jumping involves unfamiliar horses granted by the organising committee to the players. A draw is conducted to assign horses. The riding event consists of equestrian show jumping over a course between 350 metres to 450 metres in length. It includes 12 hurdles (12 jumps) with one double, and one triple jump.
The climax to the competition, the cross-country running over a 3,000 metre course, ultimately decides the winners.
The International Modern Pentathlon Union (UIPM) has been the international governing body of the modern pentathlon since its foundation in London in 1948. Its headquarters are in Monte-Carlo, Monaco, and it has 115 national federation members.
