2012 Olympics: Modern Pentathlon Thread

[LittleOzzy]

Modern pentathlon competitions at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London are scheduled to be held on Saturday 11 August and Sunday 12 August 2012. The men's and women's events will each involve 36 athletes. Venues for the events will be the Copper Box, for fencing, the Aquatics Centre in Olympic Park for swimming and Greenwich Park, for the riding and combined running and shooting discipline.

Modern pentathlon contains five events; pistol shooting, épée fencing, 200 m freestyle swimming, show jumping, and a 3 km cross-country run. These will be the first Olympic Games in which the running and shooting events are combined; athletes face three rounds of shooting each followed by a 1 km run. Each of the three rounds of firing, athletes have to shoot five targets, loading the gun after each shot; they may then resume running. Misses are not penalised, but exceeding a maximum total time of 70 seconds will result in a penalty.

[LittleOzzy]

This to me has to be the weirdest sport in the Olympics.

So many random events all put together.

[UcanUwill]

Yes, this one is random. The worst part is show jumping, athletes dont have their own horses, no chemistry, they pick horses completely randomly, its a pure luck.

[flipside21]

I don't find this sport so odd - I think it's actually quite interesting. If you think about it, it's very much a traditional gentleman's set of competitions - I'm certain that's the background. It's like looking for a Renaissance man (/woman) from the 1700 hundreds.