During a solemn and grand closing ceremony with music and speeches, Finland was the dominating country on the winner’s stand for both individual results as well as team results. It was a hard-fought competition between Turkey and Brazil for their respective second and third places.
Finland proudly brought back the team prize trophy and scored first place among the individual results as well displaying impressive skill and bull-dog spirit throughout the competition.
Introductory contests
After the flying contest, which was performed outside the official pentathlon competition, colonel Ramón Madrid, OCR representative declared the World Military Aeronautical Pentathlon Championship of 2009 opened while the rain was relentlessly pouring down on the participants.
It was Finland that once again pulled off the win in this introductory warm-up to all the five events of the week. A miscalculation of the third check-point meant that Sweden lost second place to Spain.
This year the shooting contest was carried out with air pistols which means the marksmen could use the new air pistol shooting range at the Fyrishov Sports Centre in Uppsala. Despite the fact that Romania had to use borrowed weapons, they did well in the individual results, but it was Finland’s Ville Rosenlund who won, though with extremely slim margins to Dragoş Jipa from Romania.
The Finns had a strong team in swimming as well. Ville Ojell and Mikko Honkasalo came first and third place respectively with Norway’s Magnus Lorentzen butting in on second.
A long day of duelling
Friday turned out to be a very long day indeed for all those involved in the fencing competition – the 32 pentathletes as well as all judges and officials. Brazil, Spain and Finland were all favourites in this gentlemen’s event.
At the end of the day, the three top places were settled between Paolo Porto, Brazil and Ville Rosenlund and Mikko Honkosalo, Finland. Brazil won the duel which gave Finland second and third place.
Record-breaking scores and unbeatable amounts of rain
Coordination and explosive speed was put to the test when the ball event took place on Friday. Ville Rosenlund from Finland had all the reason to feel extra proud for scoring the maximum amount of free throws (20 out of 20), an achievement few can boast about. Yiĝit Özdemir from Turkey finished second with 16 scored free throws, but the fasted man through the course was Johan Arvidsson, Sweden, who finished third in the event.
Finally, the championship neared its end on Saturday. The fight for first place was settled in pouring rain. Yiĝit Özdemir from Turkey took first place in the first event on the soapy obstacle course, followed by Johan Arvidsson, Sweden on second place and Daniel Bādicel, Romania, third. It kept raining during the orienteering event too and Finland kept dominating this event with Mikko Honkasalo finishing first.
The eventful week was concluded on Saturday evening with the prize ceremony and closing ceremony. Lastly, the Colour Guards lowered the official CISM flag while the participants already were staring to look forward to the world military pentathlon championships that will take place in 2011 in Brazil.