News The journey to Rio 2016 will be one step closer for two athletes competing in the Modern Pentathlon World Cup this weekend The final stage of the championship takes place in Minsk, Belarus, from this Friday 12 June to Sunday 14 June and the winners in both the women’s and men’s divisions will secure their places at the next Olympic Games In all, 72 athletes from 52 countries will be put to the test in the World Cup final in Minsk this weekend The event features championships in three different categories: men's singles, women's singles and the mixed relay However, the latter will be absent from the Rio 2016 program, so the relay winners will not take Olympic tickets In the women’s individual event, Laura Asadauskaite of Lithuania – reigning Olympic champion and double gold winner from World Cup #2 in Cairo and World Cup #3 in Rome – is the hot favourite to complete a golden hat trick and win the coveted Olympic spot However, she looks set to face stiff competition from top athletes Margaux Isaksen (USA) and Poland’s Oktawia Nowacka In the men’s individual event, the spotlight will be on the hotly contested battle between World Cup #4 winner Valentin Belaud from France, Ukranian Pavlo Tymoshchenko who won the gold medal in Rome, Russia’s Ilia Frolov, and Briton James Cooke, gold medal winner from World Cup #1 The four men were the highest score holders in the qualifying stages of the cup After this weekend, the new world champions will add their names to the list of 12 other competitors already qualified for the modern pentathlon event at Rio 2016 Last week’s Asia-Oceania Championship yielded the first batch of modern pentathletes for the Games, which included representatives of China, Korea, Japan, Kazakhstan and Australia (Follow the race to qualify for Rio 2016 here) More qualifiers in sight The modern pentathlon will have a busy month in June With the Asia-Oceania championships already concluded and the final stage of the Modern Pentathlon World Cup happening this weekend, the World Championships in Berlin (Germany) are next on the list, scheduled to begin on 28 June Six Olympic places will be on offer in Berlin, (three per gender), to be distributed to the best placed athletes not already qualified for Rio 2016 How it works Inspired by the skills required in the military, the pentathlon first took place in the ancient Olympics in 708 BC The "modern" in the name refers to the innovations brought by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the Modern Era of the Games The race begins with a qualifying round of fencing Then the athletes compete in five disciplines in a single day, accumulating points in each of them The first event is a 200m freestyle swimming race, followed by another round of fencing, where victory ensures another point Competitors must then ride a course of 12 obstacles over a distance of 300-400 meters on horseback The combined results of these three events decides the order in which competitors are released for the final leg of the competition – a combined running and shooting phase, which consists of an 800m race including four laps of running interspersed with stops in a firing range The winner is the first athlete to complete the running and shooting phase