London 2012 Day 15 - Greenwich Park

Saturday morning was a bit strange in Greenwich Park. All of the equestrian teams and their horses had gone and their was definitely a different atmosphere about the place. It was time for the men's modern pentathlon. Although there is horse jumping involved, modern pentathlon is a very distant cousin to the equestrian events. It's extremely exciting but completely nuts!

In the morning, the athletes were over at the Olympic Park, doing the swimming and fencing parts of the event. In the afternoon they made their way over to Greenwich Park for the horse jumping, running and shooting.

While we waited for their arrival, the victory team practised the medal ceremony:

Rehearsing the medal ceremony

Once the athletes arrived, the first thing to do was assign them with horses. All of the names were put in to a champagne bucket and chosen at random. One of the peculiar aspects of modern pentathlon is that the athletes have never seen their horses before and only get to spend twenty minutes with them before jumping.

Assigning horses to athletes at random 

The jumps are set a lot lower than they are in the equestrian jumping events, but given the situation, it's a miracle that the riders get round the course at all:

Modern Pentathlon jumping

At one point, a South Korean rider was thrown from his horse and the horse fell on top of him. For a very scary thirty seconds, the rider didn't move and then he eventually got to his feet, staggered over to his horse, get back in to the saddle and completed his round.

After the jumping, the arena was cleared of the fences and prepared for the combined running/shooting event. This was a staggered start and the position of the athletes depended on their performance so far:

After leaving the gates, the first part of the event was the target shooting, using laser guns. The athletes must shoot all five targets successfully before they can start their first 1000m run:

The athletes then re-enter the arena, shoot again and then do another run:

In total they must do three rounds of shooting and three 1000m runs. The athlete who then crosses the line in first place is the winner. It does get a bit chaotic as the event continues, with people running both inside and outside the arena, whilst others are shooting, all at the same time. It's very exciting, however.

David Svoboda from the Czech Republic came first, followed by Zhongrong Cao (China) and then Adam Marosi (Hungary):

Men's Modern Pentathlon medal ceremony