Modern pentathlon

The foundation of the modern pentathlon is disputed. On the one hand, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, claimed authorship.[2] On the other hand, Viktor Balck, the President of the Organizing Committee for the 1912 Games, showed that he made use of the long tradition of Swedish military multi-sports events, to create a manageable modern pentathlon.[3]

The name derives from the Greek péntathlon "contest of five events".[2] The addition of modern to the name distinguishes it from the original pentathlon of the ancient Olympic Games, which consisted of the stadion foot race, wrestling, long jump, javelin, and discus. As the events of the ancient pentathlon were modeled after the skills of the ideal soldier to defend a fortification of that time, Coubertin created the contest to simulate the experience of a 19th-century cavalry soldier behind enemy lines: he must ride an unfamiliar horse, fight enemies with pistol and sword, swim, and run to return to his own soldiers.[2] Originally, only amateur competitors, i.e. upper-class cavalry officers, were allowed to compete in the modern pentathlon at the Olympics. In the 1912 Games, as only amateur officers competed, the competitors were permitted to use their own horses. Up to the 1952 Olympics the ordinary cavalry soldier was considered a professional athlete, as he was riding and training horses for a living, and as such unable to participate, while the officer was considered the amateur and therefore allowed to compete.

As long as there was no official international federation for Modern Pentathlon an IOC committee was set up for the sport making use of the expertise of IOC members.[4] The governing body, Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne (UIPM) was founded in 1948.

After much lobby work of the president of the German Modern Pentathlon Federation, Wilhelm Henze, women were for the first time admitted at the world championships in 1977, and at the official world championships in 1981.[5]

The event was first held at the 1912 Olympic Games and has been on the Olympic program continuously since 1912. Modern pentathlon, despite its long Olympic history, has had to justify its inclusion in the modern Olympic Games several times. On February 11, 2013 in Lausanne, the IOC confirmed modern pentathlon once again as one of the 25 core sports of the Olympic program through to 2020.

A team event was added to the Olympic Games in 1952 and discontinued in 1992. An event for women was added to the Olympic Games in 2000.[2]

Originally, the competition took place over four or five days. In 1996, a one-day format was adopted in an effort to be more audience-friendly.[2] To enhance the experience for spectators, the UIPM proposed that all five events should be held in a single venue. This was planned for the 2016 Summer Olympics but held for the first time at the 2020 Summer Olympics. For the 2024 Summer Olympics, a condensed format of 90 minutes with eliminations is planned.[6]

Modern pentathlon is also part of the Youth Olympic Games since 2010.

A world championship has been held every year since 1949. The competitions include men and women's individual and team events together with relay events for men and women and, since 2010, a mixed relay event.

The Modern Pentathlon World Cup is an annual series of modern pentathlon competitions. The first was held in 1999.

• The fencing discipline uses the épée. The competition is a round-robin, meaning each competitor will face all the other competitors once. Each match lasts up to one minute; the first fencer to score a hit wins instantly. Double hits are not counted. If neither scores within one minute, they both lose the match. There is also a bonus round in the format of a ladder tournament in which the worst ranked athlete faces the next-to-last athlete. The winner then competes against the third last athlete and so forth.
• The swimming discipline is a 200 m freestyle race. Competitors are seeded in heats according to their fastest time over the distance.
• The riding discipline involves show jumping over a 350 to 450 m course with 12 to 15 obstacles. Competitors are paired with horses in a draw 20 minutes before the start of the event.[Note 1] To ensure fairness for all athletes, all horses which participate have successfully completed the set course.
• The laser-run is a combination of the running and shooting events so that each competitor ran four 800 m laps, each preceded by hitting five targets with a laser pistol. In each of the four rounds of firing, athletes have to successfully shoot five targets, loading the laser gun after each shot. They resume running once they have five successful hits, or once the maximum shooting time of 50 seconds has expired. Misses are not penalised.[2][8] The current format maintains the principle that the overall winner will be the first athlete to cross the finish line.[2]

Modern pentathlon has been the subject of numerous changes since the 1980s with its place on the Olympic programme in question several times.[9]

Scoring was originally done by a points-for-place system with the lowest score winning. Since the 1954 World Cup points tables are used for each of the five events and points are added for the final score.[10] This scoring was first used in the 1956 Summer Olympics.[11] The five disciplines were held on a single day — instead of four to six — from the 1996 Summer Olympics onwards.[2]

In 2015 — and for the first time in the 2016 Summer Olympics — a system of an additional bonus round was added to épée fencing in international competitions. Before that, there was only the round-robin format.

Until the 2000 Olympics, the distance for swimming was 300 metres — not 200 metres.[11]

The distance of the cross-country riding event was reduced from 5 km to 4 km in 1972.

For the 1988 Summer Olympics cross-country riding was changed to show jumping. Riding in modern pentathlon has received criticism for being perceived as being a lottery should an athlete draw an un-cooperative horse.[12] Others argue that most incidents of horses refusing to jump are result of poor rider ability on the part of the athlete and adopting behaviour which unsettles the horse.

From 1912 to 1988 regular pistols or later sport pistols were used for shooting.

From 1989 until 2009, the shooting discipline involved firing a 4.5 mm (.177 cal) air pistol in the standing position from 10 metres distance at a stationary target. The format was that of the 10 metre air pistol competition: each competitor had 20 shots, with 40 seconds allowed for each shot.

Beginning with the World Cup events in 2011, laser pistols were used instead of pistols with actual projectiles.[13] There is a slight delay between the trigger pull and the laser firing, simulating the time it would take for a pellet to clear the muzzle.[14] Air pistols with laser transmitters were introduced during the transitional period and are still in use.[15] Purpose-built laser pistols are developed and commonly used since the middle of the 2010s. Laser pistols and targets have to be homologated by the UIPM.[16]

Until the 2000 Olympics, the running distance was 4 kilometres.[11] The running discipline was shortened to a 3 km cross-country run afterwards.

In 2009 running was combined with the shooting event: three 1000 m laps with each preceded by laser shooting at five targets in 70 seconds or less.[17] From the start of the 2013 season, the laser-run was changed again to consist of four 800 m laps each preceded by laser shooting at five targets in 50 seconds or less. Thus, the distance was slightly increased to 3.2 kilometres. This change was intended to restore some of the importance of the shooting skill felt to have been lost in the original 2009 combined event.