The Lithuanian athlete Laura Asadauskaitė-Zadneprovskienė won silver in modern pentathlon on Friday – the country's first medal in Tokyo Olympics.
The British athlete Kate French finished first in the competition that involves fencing, freestyle swimming, equestrian show jumping, and a combined event of pistol shooting and cross country running. Sarolta Kovács of Hungary won bronze.
Asadauskaitė-Zadneprovskienė previously won gold at London Olympics in 2012.
She was 25th after the fencing event, kept the same ranking after swimming and scored 300 points, the maximum, at the equestrian event.
In the final event, Asadauskaitė-Zadneprovskienė finished the 3,200-metre distance in 11 minutes 38.37 seconds, improving on her own Olympic record of 12 minutes 1.01 seconds.
“I did well in all the events today. I knew I had to in order to compete for a medal,” Asadauskaitė-Zadneprovskienė told LRT.lt.
“I am very happy that I did a clean ride [in the equestrian even] and I did all I could in running – and won the medal. Everyone was expecting that, as was Lithuania. When I was finishing, I was thinking that this was a medal for entire Lithuania – and I'm happy to give it to Lithuania,“ she continued.
Another Lithuanian athlete, Gintarė Venčkauskaitė, took the 7th place.
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