LONDON: Egypt's Amro al-Geziry lowered his own men's modern pentathlon swimming Olympic record Saturday to move up to fifth in the overall standings behind China's Cao Zhongrong.

Al-Geziry posted a time of 1min 55.70sec in the 200m freestyle, beating the previous benchmark he set of 1:55.86 in Beijing four years ago.

Cao, in a tie for second place after the opening fencing round, took the overall lead with a points tally of 2,376 after registering the third fastest time at the Aquatics Centre.

Early leader David Svoboda of the Czech Republic is placed second on 2,328 points.

In third and fourth come Russian duo Aleksander Lesun and Andrei Moiseev, seeking a third consecutive Olympic title, on 2,312 and 2,256 points respectively.

The competition next moves to Greenwich Park for the show jumping third leg, with the event concluding with shooting and running, staged in a combined leg for the first time at an Olympics.

The athlete with the most points from the first three events starts the combined event first, with the rest of the field facing a one second handicap for every four pentathlon points by which they trail the leader.