Elgendy leads the way to pentathlon final

Egypt's gold medal hope Ahmed Elgendy battled back from a show jumping nightmare to reach the men's Modern Pentathlon final with an Olympic record score at the Paris Games on Friday.

Elgendy won silver in Tokyo three years ago but the 24-year-old is hoping to deliver his country's first gold of the 2024 Olympics against the impressive backdrop of the Palace of Versailles.

After scoring joint top in Thursday's fencing ranking round, Elgendy suffered a setback when his randomly-allocated horse, Talisman des Noues, refused a jump and almost threw him out of the saddle -- which would have meant elimination.

The Egyptian cleared at the second attempt but picked up penalties for knocking bars off two other fences and for excessive time. That left him 17th of 18 but he moved up to seventh after the fencing bonus round and went fifth overall after the 200 metres swim.

Elgendy took the lead in the final laser run, featuring laser pistol shooting and a run to the finish in front of thousands of spectators in a stadium erected in the palace gardens.

Elgendy's 1,516 points haul in the new 90-minute format was an Olympic record, although that was to be expected as the running distance was 200m shorter than previously.

The finalists start with a clean slate on Sunday, except for the fencing ranking round scores which carry over to a fencing bonus round. Switzerland's Alexandre Dallenbach, who had a clear round in the riding, was second in semi-final A and Mexico's Emiliano Hernandez third with both French hopefuls Jean-Baptiste Mourcia and Valentin Prades going through to the final.