Tokyo Olympics - Kate French wins Britain's first Olympic modern pentathlon gold since 2000

Kate French became Britain's first Olympic modern pentathlon champion in 21 years with a brilliant performance in the final run-shoot at Tokyo 2020.

The world number two began the laser run, which involves four 800m laps combined with four goes at shooting five targets from 10m, 15 seconds behind Russian Uliana Batashova.

But French quickly took the lead with a strong run and easily negotiated the final shoot to cruise through to the finish line to take the gold, Britain's third ever in the sport following Steph Cooke's triumph at Sydney 2000 and victory in the discontinued team event in 1976.

Her team-mate, Jo Muir, finished 14th at he first Games. Team GB have won a medal at every Games since the women's event was brought in at 2000, except for Rio 2016.

"I don't know what just happened, I can't really believe it right now," said French.

"I knew I had to focus, I knew I could do it if I just focussed on my shooting and ran as hard as I could.

"I couldn't have done it without them. Thank you so much."

It was the first time that modern pentathlon - created especially for the Olympics, allegedly by modern Games founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin - was held at one venue, with the Tokyo Stadium hosting all events in an effort to create a bigger audience.

French was looking to improve on her fifth place finish at Rio 2016 and she had begun her effort by coming sixth in the fencing as competition started on Thursday.

She began with a winning start in the swimming, finishing first in the 200m freestyle in a personal best time of 2:10.18, good enough to leave her eighth in the standings on completion of the opening event.

Fencing’s bonus was next, and French produced another solid display by finishing seventh. Both of the day’s rounds were added together to produce a final score, leaving the British pentathlete eighth overall.

But it was show jumping where everything changed. Germany’s Annika Schleu went into the round with an impressive lead, but with all competitors assigned a random horse, she was not able to strike up a quick relationship with Saint Boy, who was reluctant to start and then refused to take several fences. Schleu was in tears before her run started, and was then unable to compose herself when the ride was falling apart.

In contrast, French had produced an almost flawless ride to finish fourth in the riding standings and move up to fifth overall, just four points off the medal places.

That left laser-run, which combines a 3200m run with shooting. Each athlete goes off with a handicap, which allowed Batashova to start with a 10 second advantage over the rest of the field having taken advantage of Schleu's misfortune, but only five seconds separated silver and French in fifth.

But the British pentathlete produced a virtually flawless run, crossing the line in 12:15.34 before beginning her celebrations.

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