Modern Pentathlon Junior World Championships

Finishing fifth in the Modern Pentathlon Junior World Championships at
Druskininkai, Lithuania at the weekend, Ross Charlton also took his share of a well
won Team Silver with his GB colleagues.

With all four members of the team having made it through the qualifying rounds held
earlier in the week, some thirty six competitors lined up for Saturday’s final.
Charlton began the event well, scoring nineteen wins against sixteen defeats in the
fencing and adding a further three victories in the bonus round.

The day’s second challenge was the relatively new Obstacle Course Racing, due to
replace the traditional Horse Riding after 2024’s Paris Olympics. However, as
Pentathlon GB have twin tracked Ross as both a Junior and a Senior competitor, he
had largely focused on Show Jumping this year while many of his younger rivals had
practised extensively over the new OCR. All of this meant he remained a relative
novice over the format and posted a fairly modest time of 44 seconds.

He slipped further back down the leader board in the 200m freestyle swim, falling to
28th place after the third of the five events with only the combined 3000m Laser Run
still to come.

Always a fine runner from his early days with Morpeth Harriers, where he formed
part of a group that included triathlete Dan Dixon and which was coached by the late
Tony Ward, Charlton stormed to the fastest time of the competition, 9 minutes 47
seconds, only a second outside of his own Junior World Record.

The run took him to 5th place overall and only 11 seconds off the podium, Ross first
home for Team GB, whose next 6th and 11th individual places meant the team finished
in 2nd place behind winners France with Ukraine 3rd .

A delighted Ross is now looking forward to a couple of weeks of well earned rest and
recuperation before resuming his training with an eye on 2024.