Modern pentathlon

The modern pentathlon is an Olympic multisport that currently consists of fencing (one-touch épée), freestyle swimming, equestrian show jumping, laser pistol shooting, and cross country running. Equestrian will be replaced by a form of obstacle course racing at the 2028 Summer Olympics.
The event was first held in 1912, inspired by the traditional pentathlon held during the ancient Olympics, and designed to model skills needed by a soldier of that time. It has been a continuous part of the Summer Olympics since 1912, and a world championship has been held annually since 1949.
The rules of the modern pentathlon have changed several times, especially in the past three decades. The event has been condensed from five days to one day and further down to two hours. The latest structure, as of the 2024 Olympics, consists of separate events for fencing, swimming, and equestrian, points from which determine each athlete's starting time in the final event, the laser-run. Egypt has achieved consistent success across multiple age-group world championships, culminating in Ahmed El-Gendy winning the first Olympic gold medal by an African pentathlete at the 2024 Summer Olympics. Hungary has won the most Olympic gold medals after Michelle Gulyas became its second women’s Olympic champion at Paris 2024.
The initial program of the 2028 Olympics did not include modern pentathlon, but the 141st IOC Session in Mumbai, India, voted to approve the inclusion of the sport with its new format where obstacle racing replaces equestrian.
Modern pentathlon's governing body, Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne (UIPM), administers the international sport with member federations in more than 130 countries.
The format of the modern pentathlon has changed frequently through the sport's history. Described below is the format that was used in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris:
At the 2024 Olympics, the event was run twice for each gender. The first, the semifinals, determined which athletes could participate in the finals. The finals then determines the medallists. However, the fencing ranking round was only run once and its results were used for both the semifinals and finals.
Most sources state that the creator of the modern pentathlon was Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games. One alternative view is provided by researcher Sandra Heck, who concluded that Viktor Balck, the President of the Organizing Committee for the 1912 Games, made use of the long tradition of Swedish military multi-sports events to create the modern pentathlon.
The name derives from the Greek péntathlon "contest of five [events]". 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. The location of the first Olympic Games was Olympia in 708 BCE. As the events of the ancient pentathlon were modelled on 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.
The event was first held at the 1912 Olympic Games and has been on the Olympic program continuously ever since. It was a male-only event until the 2000 Games, when an event for women was added. This enabled the sport to achieve gender parity 24 years before the Olympic Games managed this as a whole.
A men's team event was added to the Olympic Games in 1952, and was included in all Summer Olympics until its last appearance in 1992.
Originally, the competition took place over four or five days. In 1996, a one-day format was adopted in a major shift towards the sport's more audience-friendly future. The switch to a one-day format was criticised for changing the steady character of modern pentathlon to a more fast-paced competition. To further 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, the format is further condensed into two hours. Further innovation and streamlining to maximise the sport's appeal, including changes to the fencing event, is planned for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Modern pentathlon is also part of the Youth Olympic Games since 2010.
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. Nine years later, the IOC confirmed its place on the program for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Until 1948 there was no official international federation for modern pentathlon, so an IOC committee was set up for the sport making use of the expertise of IOC members. The governing body, Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne (UIPM) was founded in 1948 in Sandhurst, England during the London 1948 Olympic Games.
A world championship has been held every year since 1949. The competitions now include men and women's individual and team events together with relay events for men and women and, since 2010, a mixed relay event. 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.
The Modern Pentathlon World Cup is an annual series of modern pentathlon competitions, with four events taking place in the regular season and the top 36 female and top 36 male athletes qualifying to compete in the World Cup Final. It was first held in 1999.
Modern pentathlon has been the subject of numerous changes since its creation.
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; at that time it was changed to 200 metres.
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.
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, in a move designed to improve the safety and sustainability of the sport, laser pistols were used instead of pistols with actual projectiles. 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. Air pistols with laser transmitters were introduced during the transitional period and are still in use. Purpose-built laser pistols are developed and commonly used since the middle of the 2010s. Laser pistols and targets have to be certified by the UIPM.
Until the 2000 Olympics, the running distance was 4 kilometres. The running discipline was shortened to a 3 km cross-country run afterwards.
In 2009, the running and shooting events were combined into three 1000 m laps with each preceded by laser shooting at five targets in 70 seconds or less. From the start of the 2013 season, the laser-run was changed to consist of four 800 m laps (increasing the distance to 3.2 kilometres) each preceded by laser shooting at five targets in 50 seconds or less. 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. After the 2020 Summer Olympics (postponed to 2021), the run was further modified to a new model of five 600 m laps.
The laser-run has been criticized as altering too radically the nature of the skills required. The New York Times asked whether the name ought to be changed to "tetrathlon" given that two of the five disciplines had been combined into a single event. Laser-run has also become a sport in its own right with para athlete participation and world championships of its own. It is the summer equivalent of the biathlon winter sport, which involves skiing and shooting.
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. This scoring was first used in the 1956 Summer Olympics. The five disciplines were held on a single day — instead of four to six — from the 1996 Summer Olympics onwards. In the 2024 Olympics, all five disciplines – other than the fencing ranking round – will all take place in the same venue within 90 minutes.
The riding discipline attracted criticism during the 2020 Summer Olympics after multiple athletes in the women's event struggled to control their randomly-assigned horses. This culminated in the German team's coach, Kim Raisner, being removed from the event after striking a horse with her fist. Following the Games, in November 2021 it was reported that the UIPM was opening consultations on the proposed replacement of riding with another discipline. The decision was ratified during the UIPM's Congress on 27 November 2021, with the changes intended to be implemented for the 2028 Summer Olympics. According to critics of the decision, the UIPM voted for the change without consulting athletes, claiming force majeure.
The decision was met with criticism from various athletes and bodies, who considered riding to be integral to modern pentathlon. Some also accused the UIPM of hindering debate in favor of riding during the congress. More than 650 modern pentathletes signed a letter calling for the UIPM executive board to resign in November 2021. A group known as "Pentathlon United" called for the IOC to investigate the UIPM's governance, and proposed a plan to maintain riding with rule changes to bring them in line with those of the International Federation for Equestrian Sports (FEI), and a focus on animal welfare.
In May 2022, the UIPM announced it would hold an obstacle racing test event alongside the 2022 Modern Pentathlon World Cup final in Ankara, citing that it had received the most support out of the over 60 disciplines proposed, was more cost-effective, would help make the event more attractive to a younger audience, and was "compatible with the DNA of modern pentathlon". The competition course was developed with input from World Obstacle and Japanese broadcaster TBS (producer of the sports competition series Sasuke, whose format has been widely exported under the title Ninja Warrior), and the event featured a mix of athletes from both the obstacle racing and modern pentathlon communities. Australian gymnast Olivia Vivian—a grand finalist of Australian Ninja Warrior—won the gold in the women's competition.
On 9 July 2022, Pentathlon United shared a survey of 213 responses from 40 countries, claiming that 68.5% of the respondents were current athletes, that indicated more than 92% of current modern pentathlon participants wanted to preserve the equestrian discipline as part of the sport. The group stated, "A total of 74.18% chose the reformed version of equestrian, which puts horse welfare among the central themes, while concern over the cost and accessibility of the equestrian discipline is also acknowledged in the 16-point plan." Of those polled, Pentathlon United claimed that only athletes from the United Kingdom showed any support for an obstacle race, with athletes from the United States overwhelmingly voting for a reformed version of equestrian sport.
In October 2022, modern pentathlon's elected Athletes Committee launched a campaign entitled #OurFuture, highlighting the views of pentathletes in favour of the change. Athletes such as Olympic silver medallists Elodie Clouvel (France) and Ahmed Elgendy (Egypt) supported the transition when participating in a media conference at UIPM Headquarters in Monaco. They were joined by Athletes Committee representatives including the group's Chair, Yasser Hefny OLY (Egypt), Jamie Cooke (Great Britain) and Natalya Coyle OLY (Ireland), as well as former Pan American champion Tamara Vega (Mexico).
In November 2022, the UIPM Congress voted 69–11 in favor of replacing riding with obstacle course racing; an associated motion established that the changes would take effect for junior competition in 2023. The 2023 and 2024 junior world championships duly took place with obstacle in place of equestrian. The new format's implementation at the senior level will be formalised after the 2024 Summer Olympics.
On 22 June 2023, the UIPM shared a poll of 1,500 Americans by YouGov that they commissioned in support of their decision to replace riding with obstacle course racing, citing that the survey showed that "45% of Gen Z and 41% of Millennials more likely to watch the Olympics on television if it featured a ninja-style obstacle race...taken as a percentage of the U.S. population, this would equate to nearly 45 million more people watching the Games". The UIPM also stated, "More than two-thirds (37%) of survey respondents said they would be more likely to watch the new-look Modern Pentathlon at the Olympic Games, and 46% of those cited enjoying ninja-style obstacle races as the reason, with 34% describing the reason for their answer: 'I think the Modern Pentathlon needs to embrace change'." The article also indirectly referenced the popular TV show American Ninja Warrior.
Іn August 2023 during the 2023 UIPM Pentathlon and Laser Run World Championships, the UIPM signed a memorandum of understanding with World Obstacle to collaborate on the integration of obstacle racing into the modern pentathlon at the senior level; UIPM president Klaus Schormann stated that the federation was "want[ing] to bring a different challenge to the Olympic Movement, to be more urban and provide something that young generations will love." The MoU was criticised by Pentathlon United, who questioned World Obstacle's finances (in particular, being funded solely by one person with no other commercial revenue). In October 2023, during the 141st IOC Session in Mumbai, the IOC voted to reinstate modern pentathlon with its new format for the 2028 Summer Olympics.
In 2021, modern pentathlon consistently had the least TV viewers of all Olympic sports, and also ranked at the bottom for internal Olympic measurements of social engagement. The Greek modern pentathlon coach said, "We are an Olympic sport that is on the edge... We're very, very low down, if not bottom, in a lot of ratings like ticket sales, viewership, and participation". Sports academic Jörg Krieger wrote in 2022 that the sport "suffered from a lack of participation in the sport, as well as [having] limited public interest". However, KXAS-TV reporter Stephanie de Lancey called the compressed 90-minute format used at the 2024 Olympics "fast and action-packed" and said the replacement of show jumping for 2028 was "a way for the sport to evolve in the 21st century."
A 2021 study by Quartz concluded that modern pentathlon (in the form that included equestrian) was the most expensive Olympic sport for entry-level costs. It found that to start modern pentathlon cost US$13,580 for equipment and facilities. Most other Olympic sports examined cost less than $500 to start in.
Media related to Modern pentathlon at Wikimedia Commons