By Alan Baldwin
PARIS (Reuters) – Modern Pentathlon’s decision to replace horses with obstacle courses after the Paris Olympics bodes well for the long term future, the head of the governing UIPM said on Wednesday.
The mix of fencing, swimming, show jumping, laser pistol shooting and running did not feature on an initial list for Los Angeles 2028 after a scandal at the Tokyo Games in 2021 when a German coach struck a horse that refused to jump a fence.
It was reinstated after the UIPM, led by 77-year-old German Klaus Schormann, announced the equestrian element would be dropped.
Schormann sounded confident when it was put to him that Los Angeles might be a last chance for a sport that has been in the Games since 1912 and was beloved of Olympics founder Pierre de Coubertin.
“What’s important is that the Olympic sport is accessible around the world and so that is what we are delivering now to Los Angeles,” he told a press conference.
“Then we will work closely with the IOC sports department, with the media. How they will judge on that, what we are doing, then that is a process that I’m sure will be going on after the Los Angeles games as well to Brisbane in 2032.
“I am very convinced on that part. We are going in the right track and this process will be I think great for us for the future.”
Some athletes have opposed the change but the sport hopes to attract a young and more diverse audience with a format better suited to television.
Swiss team coach Jamie Cooke, a former world champion for Britain who sits on the UIPM athletes’ committee, agreed the future was looking much brighter.
“I’m really, really positive that the changes we’ve made have been building towards thriving at the Olympic Games. We’ve seen the excitement in these new urban sports such as skateboarding, BMX, climbing,” he said.
“We’ll be going into our first Olympics with this discipline so there’s always going to be questions over it in terms of its validity and success,” he said, adding that last year’s under-19 world championships using the format had been positive.
“That litmus test was ‘we’ve got this right’… when you watch these young athletes flying down an obstacle course with some smoke and some lights, it was one of those moments where we went ‘yes, this is it. This is right’.”
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Christian Radnedge)
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