By Mike Rowbottom at the Main Press Centre on the Olympic Park in London

Jean-Maxence Berrou_06-08-12August 6 - Jean-Maxence Berrou, has failed in a late appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to join the London 2012 Olympic field this Saturday (August 12) – although the CAS panel "regretted" that the International Modern Pentathlon Union (UIPM) "gave false hopes" to the French athlete through qualification criteria which contained an error in translation.

An Olympic place had become available following the withdrawal from the event of Poland's Łukasz Klekot "further to a doping problem".

The UIPM told the French Federation of Modern Pentathlon (FFPM) on July 20 that the vacant slot would go to Berrou (pictured above), but emailed the Irish federation two days later offering the place to Arthur O'Keefe, whose participation has now been confirmed.

Following an initial hearing last Thursday (August 2), the CAS panel of Maidie Oliveau of the United States, Graeme Mew of Canada and Guédel Ndiaye of Senegal gave the UIPM a deadline of today to decide on adding a 37th participant in the men's race – and the answer was negative.

In rejecting the French challenge today, the CAS panel noted that there was a translation error in the French version of the qualification system implemented by the UIPM.

It determined that the English version of the rules should prevail and considered that the Irish pentathlete had obtained his qualification.

The French had applied to CAS for a ruling after an initial challenge to the UIPM had appeared to be running out of time.

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