Sure, the decathlon is the ultimate in all-around achievement -- running, jumping, throwing, all that. But seriously, when was the last time you had to throw a discus or a javelin? The modern pentathlon was designed specifically to provide a context for athletic effort, and remains the only sport on the Olympic program with actual narrative structure.
The sport was created by the very man who revived the Olympic Games for modern times, whose heart is entombed in a box at ancient Olympia. Pierre de Coubertin wanted to put together a five-faceted discipline that would capture the spirit of the ancient Greek pentathlon -- in addition to four track and field events, that event incorporated wrestling. The pentathlon did not just train athletes, it forged warriors.
Coubertin was able to get his creation onto the Olympic program in 1912 after two failures to convince the IOC. HE thought of the breakthrough as nothing less than divine providence: "The Holy Ghost of sport illuminated my colleagues and they accepted a competition to which I attach great importance."
What made this pentathlon "modern" was its use of newer battle equipment. The five sports involved make up the elements in a apocryphal story about a French soldier delivering a message to a commanding officer. The soldier must go through hostile territory to do so.
As the story goes, a young French officer in Napoleon's army was sent on an unfamiliar horse to deliver a message into hostile territory. He was first greeted by an enemy soldier with his sword drawn. The two dueled. The French officer won the duel and continued on his horse until it was shot out from under him. He fired a shot with his pistol and killed the enemy but his horse didn't make it. He swam across a river and ran the rest of the way to deliver his message. When he arrived, his commanding officer greeted him with, "What took you?"
For the modern pentathlon, however, the order of the stages has been altered.
1. Shooting (10m air pistol) -- Pentathletes fire 20 shots at 20 targets, and are given points for relative closeness to the bulls-eye. Each shooter gets 40 seconds to complete their round.
2. Fencing (épée) -- Each pentathlete fights every other in one-minute bouts, and the first to register a hit wins. If both fail to register a hit, both are given a loss.
3. Swimming (200 meter freestyle) -- Pentathletes are divided into heats and race against the clock.
4. Equestrian (show jumping) -- Horses and pentathletes are paired by lot 20 minutes ahead of the competition, then must complete a 15-obstacle riding course.
5. Athletics (3000 meters) -- The final run is contested on a cross-country course. In order to produce a finish that makes visual sense, modern pentathlon has adopted a staggered-start system based on the points accumulated in the first four events. In the Atlanta 1996 photo above, eventual gold medalist Alex Parygin (KAZ) takes off while organizers make sure the other runners don't jump their respective guns.
In order to normalize the results that come from a wide array points, minutes, hits and penalties, modern pentathlon makes use of a confusing scoring system that's based on a 1000-point scale. In the past, the Olympic MP was staged over five days. But as its very existence on the Olympic program continues to be questioned, all five events are held on one single day.
In 2008:
A total of 36 women and 36 men can participate in the Beijing MP, all of which had to qualify at championships around the world. No nation can field more than two pentathletes from either gender.
The men's pentathlon will be contested on August 21 (Day 13), and the women will get Napoleonic the next day.
Modern Pentathlon Fun Facts:
- A men's team event was held from 1952 through 1992.
- Swedes won eight of the first nine men's individual events. George Patton was the fifth-place finisher in the inaugural modern pentathlon at Stockholm in 1912.
- The current world champion on the men's side is Ilia Frolov of Russia, who defended his title in June with 5796 penta-points. Equestrian-only athletes never show this kind of emotion.
- The sport's points system occasionally makes for some juicy scandal. Just this week, in fact, Donna Vakalis of Greece, who did not qualify for Beijing, sued the Australian Olympic Committee and claimed that trial scores for Aussie pentathlete Angie Darby had been invented.
- Great Britain's Olympic authorities used the same tack last month in having Parygin -- who switched from Kazakhstan to Australia before the 2000 Games -- ousted from this year's men's field. They claimed that because the event he qualified in was actually a quadrathlon. There was an equine influenza outbreak in Tokyo at the time, and the show jumping portion was cancelled. The removal stoked simmering Aussie-Brit sporting tensions, and the Sydney Morning Herald used a semi-derogatory term in its headline: "Poms crush Aussie Games hopes with rules, not talent".
- Jacques Rogge, current president of the IOC, just might be the world's leading modern pentathlon hater. Twice now, he has explicitly called for the sport to be removed from the Olympic program. He prefers rugby sevens. But the MP will enjoy its 100th Olympic anniversary at London 2012, thanks in part to the son of former IOC leader Juan Antonio Samaranch, a current member. Samaranch the younger also happens to be the vice-president of the International Modern Pentathlon Union.
All-Time Medal Standings:
| Nation | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | 9 | 8 | 4 | 21 |
 | 9 | 7 | 5 | 21 |
 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 15 |
 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 7 |
 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 5 |
 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
 | 0 | 6 | 3 | 9 |
 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 5 |
 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
(Photo © Icon SMI)
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