Modern pentathlon silver medalist Ahmed El-Gendy is over the moon with pride after winning his second Olympic medal in Tokyo 2020— His first medal was gold and he won it at the Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2018.

Modern pentathlon is a sport where the athlete competes in five different sports; fencing, swimming, equestrian, shooting, and running, all in one day, which makes this sport’s athletes the toughest and as said, ‘complete athletes’.

“These two medals are the most precious to me. Though I have achieved other gold, silver, and bronze medals in the world championships and World Cups, yet the Olympic medals are the most valuable to me. They are my biggest achievement, as the Olympic medals are hard to win. Glad I did it,” he said.

The 21- year-old is an engineering student at the Arab Academy for Science and Technology. He started playing Modern Pentathlon at the age of six years old. “That was in 2006 when I made my debut in the sport at Tala’a El-Geish Club. My first coach was Hisham Soliman, my running coach, and I am lucky to still have him by my side until now. In 2014, I joined the Egyptian national team, I was 14 years old then,” he recalled.

Just like many athletes, El-Gendy suffered a shoulder injury four months before the start of the Olympic Games which was a huge challenge for him during his preparation period for the Games.

El-Gendy shared the same opinion as to his colleagues who won Olympic medals in Tokyo regarding the difficulties they all faced in the building up process and training for the Games. “It is always the lack of the financial support that caused issues, especially in equestrian. While competing, my toughest and rigid moments were in the course of the horse show-riding, it was just one minute and a half, yet, it was very challenging. We needed to train more on different horses; it would have been better and easier for us in pentathlon… but we did our best,” he explained.

The former twice ‘Best World Junior Pentathlete’ El-Gendy thanked his sponsors for their effort and financial resources. “My sponsors, El-Shaba Group, Mohamed Adel Hosni, and ASN Supplements helped me a lot in the preparations and had a great influence on me.”

El-Gendy also thanked the Head of State, President Abdel-Fatah El-Sisi for honoring him and his fellow colleagues for their achievements. “We really appreciate this honor and the monetary prize we received. Recognizing our achievements is an incentive to us as athletes, it drives us forward. I was so happy and grateful to the President and the governor. And I have to mention that the airport reception was great.”

After receiving his Olympic medal and stepping down from the podium, El-Gendy contacted his family first thing; his parents and siblings. “They have always been supportive to me.”

El-Gendy also thanked everyone who has believed in his potentials and capabilities. “Those who believed in me clinching an Olympic medal were the officials of the federation, my coaches, and family. They have been there since the beginning of the competition until the last race, even when I was behind at the 13th place, they still had faith that I would claim a medal. Their enthusiastic support in the arena kept pushing me forward, and made me come all the way from behind to win second place.

“I appreciate the support of the Egyptian media who have started paying more attention to the individual sports, especially after the Rio Games and after the Tokyo Olympics, and I hope they continue showing support to individual sports. I used to follow social media before coming to Tokyo but once I arrived, I just shut it all down so I can focus on my competition as I didn’t need any distractions.

“Paris 2024 is the next target and goal for me and my teammates and in order to reach this, we need to work hard and go through many world championships to keep it up and be able to qualify to the coming Olympics and win another Olympic medal,” El-Gendy concluded.