When the Palace of Versailles was designated the home of modern pentathlon at the Paris Olympics, organisers had no idea of the exquisite drama that might play out there in two years’ time.
On the penultimate day of competition, a grand open-air show jumping arena, under construction on the Etoile Royale esplanade at the heart of the Palace gardens, will host the final showjumping competitions for the embattled sport before it swaps out horses for Ninja Warrior-style obstacle racing, in a desperate bid for Olympic survival.
German athlete Annika Schleu’s ride on Saint Boy in the Tokyo Olympics triggered an avalanche of bad publicity for modern pentathlon.Credit:Getty
It will be a poignant moment for the sport once championed by the French father of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, as the ultimate “moral and physical test of the complete athlete”, but lately diminished by an animal cruelty scandal, corruption claims and an athlete revolt.
At the centre of the story are two Australians, one vowing to disrupt this weekend’s vote on obstacle racing at the Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne (UIPM)’s global Congress this weekend, and the other waiting in the wings for his counterpart to fail.
“A core value of modern pentathlon is identifying the complete athlete,” Ninja Warrior proponent Ian Adamson says. “Obstacle sport events do this because they balance speed, strength, balance, coordination, spatial awareness, problem-solving and overall athleticism.”
Adamson is the adventure-mad president of World Obstacle Racing, the international federation in the box seat to benefit from riding’s removal. Sydney-raised and now based in the United States and Switzerland, he is in Delhi, en route to Everest Base Camp for the 2022 Altitude Obstacle Racing Championships, when the Herald tracks him down.
Obstacle racing, popularised by the Ninja Warrior television show, is on the cusp of Olympic inclusion through modern pentathlon.Credit:Nigel Wright
“In my observation of the four (UIPM-staged) test events, the athletes adapt quickly and overwhelmingly love the formats,” he says.
“One [format] looks like the Ninja Warrior TV shows and one looks like the OCR Sprint format.” By that he means a series of frames, ramps, ropes, swings, ladders and boards that competitors navigate over a timed 100m course. To the novice eye it resembles eventing, just without the horses and resulting air of elegance and risk.
Under Adamson’s founding leadership, World Obstacle signed a secret 2015 memorandum of understanding with UIPM to merge the two sports. That MOU “came to a dead end, as many do”, Adamson says, but the relationship between the governing bodies stuck.
Alex Watson’s failed doping test at the Seoul Olympics was front page news in 1988.Credit:Sun-Herald
So well, in fact, that it is front and centre of the campaign being fought by the other Australian, former pentathlete Alex Watson, to save riding and oust the UIPM’s current leadership.
Watson is a three-time Olympian, dubbed the ‘Cappuccino Kid’ for a caffeine violation that had him thrown out of the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
A self-styled ‘disruptor’ aghast at modern pentathlon’s reduced standing since his days as competition manager at the Sydney Olympics, the charismatic Queenslander is going head-to-head with the UIPM’s powerful and entrenched president of some 30 years, Klaus Schormann.
After a 20-year absence from the sport and a doping conviction against his name, it is a bold move at the 11th hour.
“I got involved because of two things,” Watson tells the Herald from his home on the Sunshine Coast, where he founded and ran an award-winning equine tourism operation until its sale last year. “The first was just my sense of disappointment with the way the sport had gone and was being managed. The people in charge have been there too long, they have an entrenched power base they are clinging to and the sport isn’t developing or being properly managed. The other side was that the athletes are being totally ignored. The majority want riding retained.”
What is obstacle racing?
Obstacle racing is a comparatively new sport popularised by the Ninja Warrior television show. Obstacles include popular ninja racing apparatus such as sonic steps, double swing, tilting ladders, floating steps, single cat grab, globe grasper and warped wall.
Modern pentathlon’s global governing body, the UIPM, wants to replace the horse riding round with obstacle racing to preserve the sport’s place in the Olympics program beyond Paris 2024.
The sport requires a combination of speed, strength, agility, power and balance as athletes navigate a 100-metre course of between eight and 14 obstacles in the shortest time possible. The UIPM has held four test events this year but never as part of a full modern pentathlon race.
Modern pentathlon has fallen on hard times. It is not on the program for the 2028 Games. A perennial cellar-dweller in the supporter metrics watched closely by the International Olympic Committee, the sport has been in constant flux for at least the past three decades. It has moved from a five-day to a one-day event, done away with live rounds in the shooting, replaced the air pistols with lasers, combined the shooting and the running, and turned the riding into a final round-only discipline. None of it has been able to turn the ship around fast enough.
Ian Adamson
The final straw came in Tokyo last year, when German rider Annika Schleu and her coach Kim Raisner were pictured hitting Schleu’s panicked horse in an effort to get it moving on the course. Before a distraught Schleu could dismount at the end of a disastrous ride, her smartwatch was blowing up with online abuse. The UIPM condemned the actions of Raisner, promised a thorough review and two months later voted to drop riding at its 2021 global Congress.
The move outraged many athletes, including Australia’s 2016 gold medallist Chloe Esposito, who said the abrupt decision was dumped on athletes.
“It is heartbreaking. I don’t know if I can really keep being interested in watching and following along – it won’t feel like pentathlon anymore,” she told the Herald. “I’ve been riding since I was 10. Young athletes have worked hard on their riding. All that goes to waste.”
The move drove a group of athletes, including Britain’s reigning Olympic and world champion Joe Choong, to set up Pentathlon United which, in turn, looked to Watson for help. On Thursday, a separate group of American athletes released an astonishing rebuke of their national body, alleging that USA Pentathlon Multisport boss Rob Stull lied about holding a meeting with them to discuss the proposed changes to the sport and calling for his resignation.
“Not only did this meeting not happen but Mr. Stull has persisted in promoting the [UIPM] agenda that suggests that athletes support the removal of riding in favor of a ninja race. This again is a blatant disregard for the truth. USAPM athletes, like 90 per cent of pentathlon athletes worldwide, have been very clear on their stance that riding should remain part of the sport…,” the group said in a statement.
“This sport can be a cracker if it’s run properly.”
Alex Watson
For others, such as Kitty Chiller, the switch is a matter of survival for what she calls the “ultimate kitchen table sport”. Chiller finished 14th in the modern pentathlon in Sydney and, among many other high profile sports administration roles, served as president of Modern Pentathlon Australia for 12 years.
She says comments last year from IOC president Thomas Bach warning modern pentathlon and other sports, such as boxing, to “change or be changed”, were as clear a signal as possible that a radical shake-up was necessary. Chiller, now the president of Modern Pentathlon Oceania, also believes the riding element — in which she placed second in Sydney — is a handbrake on the sport’s development around the world.
Alex Watson competed in three Olympics and is leading a revolt against the global leadership of modern pentathlon.Credit:Juanita Wilson
“The key is having sports that are accessible with minimal infrastructure, equipment and expense. In modern pentathlon the approaches we’ve made to developing federations in the region, as soon as they know there’s horse riding in the sport they’re not able to even contemplate getting involved,” she said.
Watson is undaunted. He launched his bid for presidency in London two weeks ago, determined to bring in a new era of transparency, reinstate riding and rebuild the sport’s commercial model, which is dependent on Olympic funding.
There is the matter of his 1988 doping violation hanging in the air in the lead-up to Congress which, in accordance with the UIPM constitution, should preclude him from holding a leadership position.
Watson’s lifetime ban was reduced to two years on appeal by the Australian Olympic Committee and caffeine was later removed from the list of banned substances in the Olympic Games. He never applied to the IOC to have the breach rescinded.
He is bemused by the suggestion the UIPM would come after him now when he served as competition manager in Sydney then sat on the UIPM executive board until 2002.
“I was eligible then, why would I be ineligible now,” he asks.
“This sport can be a cracker if it’s run properly. What is ridiculous to me is, here are these people who’ve been there for over 20 years, who screwed it all up so badly, they’re then saying ‘don’t worry, we’ll bring in obstacle racing and we’ll be capable managers of that’.
“If it was any other organisation you’d put a broom through there and say ‘you’re not competent’. Someone must take some responsibility.”
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