Jun Woong-tae, Seo Chang-wan finish 6th, 7th in men's modern pentathlon

Jun Woong-tae, right, and Seo Chang-wan of South Korea react to their sixth-place and seventh-place finishes in the men's modern pentathlon final at the Paris Olympics at Chateau de Versailles in Versailles, France, on Aug. 10. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

The 2021 bronze medalist Jun Woong-tae finished sixth in the men's modern pentathlon at the Paris Olympics on Saturday, while his South Korean teammate Seo Chang-wan was right behind him in seventh.

Jun was in a bronze medal position in the late stages before being passed by the eventual bronze medalist, Giorgio Malan of Italy.

At the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, Jun won bronze to become the first South Korean to win a modern pentathlon medal, but he came up short in a bid for his second straight medal.

Seo cracked the top 10 in his Olympic debut.

Ahmed Elgendy of Egypt took the gold medal, and Taishu Sato of Japan got the silver medal.

With the famed Chateau de Versailles in the backdrop, just west of Paris, athletes took their points in the fencing ranking round from Thursday into the final. Jun had 235 points then, the fourth-highest total.

The day began with equestrian show jumping, with athletes starting at 300 points and getting deductions for faults, refusals and time violations.

Jun finished with 287 points and moved to 522 total points.

In the fencing bonus round, an elimination tournament with 30-second bouts, fencers were seeded by their ranking round results. The winner of each bout earned two points and stayed on to face the next athlete. The victory for the final bout was worth four points.

Jun picked up six huge points there, winning his first two bouts and then beating Elgendy in the final bout.

The athlete moved on to the 200-meter freestyle swimming, where a time of 2:30 was worth 250 points. One point was added for every 0.5 second faster than the target, and one point was deducted for every 0.5 second slower than the target.

Jun ranked seventh overall in swimming with a time of 1:59.41, good for 312 points.

Jun Woong-tae of South Korea competes in the show jumping event of the men's modern pentathlon final at the Paris Olympics at Chateau de Versailles in Versailles, France, on Aug. 10. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

That gave him 840 points entering the last event, the laser run, 17 points back of Elgendy. Alexandre Dallenbach of Switzerland also had 840 points, and he and Jun started the laser run 17 seconds after Elgendy as part of staggered starts. Jun and Dallenbach were six points ahead of Sato.

The laser run combined the running of five 600m laps and four stops at a laser pistol shooting station, with athletes required to hit five targets set 10m away. Finishing positions in this event would determine the three medalists.

Jun needed 14 attempts to hit five targets in his first shooting stop, spending 25.8 seconds there to fall farther back of Elgendy. With Dallenbach falling behind, Sato caught Jun and then pulled away from the South Korea after their third shooting stop.

Jun tried to hang on to the bronze medal spot, but Malan passed him on the track down the stretch. Long after Elgendy had crossed the finish line first, a few others also zipped by Jun.

Jun only had the 13th-best time in laser run at 10:14.33. He spent 1:06.28 of that time in shooting, the second-worst time in the final.

Seo was seventh at the start of laser run and finished in seventh place. He posted the 10th-best laser run time at 10:02.33. (Yonhap)