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Who doesn’t know the names Simone Biles or Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky or Usain Bolt?
The Summer Olympics enjoy a bevy of marquee events, but for the most “Olympic” sport of all, you might have to dig a little deeper into your viewing schedule to find it: the modern pentathlon.
And enjoy it now. It's changing after the Paris Olympics.
“It sort of embodies the spirit of the Olympic Games,” said Phaelen French, a Team USA Pentathlete. “That’s why I found it so compelling.” And for the viewer at home, it may well be witnessing the spirit at work — the sheer range of disciplines practiced over a period of three days — that make it essential Olympic watching.
A version of the pentathlon existed during the ancient Greek games, and it consisted of five events that would largely be at home in today’s athletics competition: A footrace, javelin and discus throws, and a long jump. A wrestling portion rounded out the event. But as early as 1894, two years before the revival of the modern Games, “Father of the Olympics” Pierre de Coubertin advocated for an updated version.
This “modern” sport differed greatly from its ancient ancestor. Today’s athletes are expected to compete in five rather disparate disciplines: fencing, swimming, show jumping, running, and shooting.
At the 2024 Games, the five events are spread out over three days. First, an epée fencing round. Day two involves a 200 meter freestyle swim, a show jumping course — completed with an unfamiliar horse with whom athletes are given just 20 minutes of practice time — and a bonus fencing round. The final event, on day three, is a combined laser-run. Think of it as a Summer biathlon, where runners only stop to shoot their targets.
While it seems far removed from its ancient cousin, a closer look reveals the modern pentathlon was designed to serve a similar function.
Just as running and javelin throwing and wrestling would serve a warrior of old, the command of a horse and accuracy of a sidearm would serve a modern, turn of the 20th-century soldier. Dr. Sandra Heck of the Institut national de l’activité physique et des sports in Luxembourg has written about the social history of the sport. And she points out a clear reason why, after 18 years of Coubertin’s activism, it was the 1912 Games where the modern pentathlon was first contested.
“Those disciplines appeared attractive to a large part of influential sportsmen, as they were in preparation of a possible war,” said Heck. “They [were] supporting skills and competencies in men that might support the duties of war.” Two years later, the Great War began. And during the interwar years, Heck notes, still-simmering tensions kept the sport on the map.
It wasn’t until the 1952 Helsinki Olympics that a civilian, a Swedish carpenter named Lars Hall, won gold, which was a huge deal. Up to that point, the sport was mainly practiced — and dominated by — military personnel. (George Patton, who competed in 1912, finished 20th in a field of 32 athletes.)
Today, two members of Team USA are in the Air Force, including French, who has a competitive athletic background in triathlon but had been aware of modern pentathlon from the days of her youth in Colorado. “When I was about 5 or 6, we went over for a modern pentathlon in Colorado Springs and got to watch some of the events take place, and that excitement always stuck with me,” she explained.
Years later, as an adult triathlete looking for ways to compete at a higher level, French remembered that excitement and committed to training for what she calls a “fairly niche” sport. And while she learned to swim faster and how to fence entirely, she didn’t completely start from scratch — she had some equestrian experience from her Mountain West upbringing.
Now, the sport is once again on the verge of change.
A viral video from the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 that showed a coach punching a horse helped prompt the show jumping portion to be removed, and replaced with an obstacle course race, akin to something out of the Ninja Warrior series.
However, the sport has changed quite a bit in its long Olympic history. For starters, laser guns eventually replaced handguns. Show jumping replaced cross country riding in 1988, and 2000 saw the first women’s event. In 2012, organizers combined the foot race and shooting portions, and in 2016 introduced the concept of a bonus fencing round. Still, this recent change is the first time a discipline will be dropped completely.
French, who grew up around horses, holds fondly what will soon be a memory. “I think that it's a very elegant nature of the sport, she said. “I’ll be sad to see that element going away with that kind of teammate that you have to meet and kind of develop a relationship quickly.”
Heck described her own nuanced feelings about the change, a struggle between tradition and contemporary conversation about what the sport offers to society. Still, she expressed admiration for the athletes and nodded to the importance of remembering its origins.
“There is no other sport which reflects such a diversity and such a diverse training of its athletes,” she said. And with its relation to the war times, I think it's also good to watch it, to remember when it was born, and to hopefully avoid the necessity of circumstances like that.
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