Great Britain's Joseph Choong made it a British sweep of the modern pentathlon gold medals, winning the men's event with an Olympic record 1482 points a day after Kate French won the women's gold.
Choong led going into the final phase and fended off a challenge from Egypt's Ahmed Elgendy, who worked his way up from 13th to pull even but was unable to keep up on the last lap. Elgendy became the first African medalist in the sports.
Earlier in the day, the USA's Amro Elgeziry, himself a former representative of Egypt, set an Olympic record of 1:52.96 in the 200m freestyle swim, the second phase of the event that combines fencing, swimming, show jumping, shooting and running, the latter in a biathlon-style mix of interrupting a run to shoot at targets. The short-course pool was outdoors in the unique venue of Tokyo Stadium, where a fencing piste, show jumping course, running loop and laser-shooting range occupy the field space.
Elgeziry, though, wasn't able to get near the podium despite a solid 290 out of 300 points in the riding phase. Fencing is weighted rather heavily, and Elgeziry was only 16-19 in the fencing ranking round on Thursday. He started 46 seconds behind Choong in the laser run phase, in which athletes are handicapped based on results so far.
This is Elgeziry's fourth appearance in the Olympics but his first competing for the United States. He previously competed for Egypt but moved to the United States after marrying U.S. pentathlete Isabella Isaksen, with whom he won gold in the mixed relay at the 2019 Pan American Games.
Choong needed eight shots to hit the five targets at the first shooting stop, but he took down all five in quick succession in his second time through. South Korean athletes Jun Woong-tae and Jung Jin-hwa trailed by nearly 10 seconds, along with the Czech Republic's Jan Kuf.
The British athlete kept his advantage after the third shoot, using seven shots, while the trailing pack of three was joined by Elgendy, who was perfect on his second and third passes through the shooting range.
Elgendy pulled with 3.5 seconds of Choong heading into the last stop on the range, then pulled even as they headed out onto the last 800-meter lap.
Choong, though, surged anew, and Elgendy was left to take a comfortable second place ahead of Jun, who edged ahead of his fellow South Korean for bronze.
Elgeziry bookmarked his first-place finish in the swim with the slowest time in the laser run, fading to 25th overall.