Three modern pentathlon athletes from the Inner Mongolia sports team pose for a group photo. [Photo/Inner Mongolia Daily]

Three modern pentathlon athletes from North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region performed well at China's 14th National Games, which officially kicked off in the capital of Northwest China's Shaanxi province, on Sept 15.

Wu Bochen, who participated in the National Games for the first time, won fifth place and gave the best performance of the Inner Mongolia sports team in the modern pentathlons during the National Games.

The 16-year-old Liu Zhenfeng performed well in the equestrian and laser running events and took 18th place. He was followed by his teammate Zi Haitao, who ranked 19th.

Liu Zhenfeng is one of the youngest athletes on the Inner Mongolia sports team.

He has trained for the modern pentathlon for less than one year. Before joining the Inner Mongolia sports team, he knew nothing about four of the modern pentathlons.

An Inner Mongolia athlete competes in the men's modern pentathlon at China's 14th National Games. [Photo/Inner Mongolia Daily]

But with a hard-working stubbornness and deep insight, he made rapid progress. He only started practicing for the equestrian event in June this year.

His success in the National Games has built Liu's confidence and he has set a goal to enter the national team to represent China in the Olympic Games.

Chao Lu, the head coach of the Inner Mongolia modern pentathlon, said that his team has a strong foundation in the item. But for many years, compared with other coastal provinces and regions in the country, Inner Mongolia's swimming item has been somewhat lacking, which made it difficult to make major breakthroughs in the games.

In recent years, the Inner Mongolia team has been focusing on improving athletes' swimming abilities, decreasing the average time of players from around 2 minutes 30 seconds to around 2 minutes 10 seconds.