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Modern Pentathlon

Does everyone know that the modern pentathlon includes riding? I was SHOCKED when I found it - I feel like riding is such a niche sport in the USA already, so to see it included as part of another “sport” was a surprise. It takes place on the 6th if anyone else wants to catch it.

There is a thread here about it. One of our posters has donated their horse for use in pentathlon in the past.

Thank you for the date that it will run.

Edit to add link to the other thread.

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Only watch the riding portion if you have a strong stomach. 90% of the athletes that compete couldn’t trot a cross rail without yanking on the horse’s mouth or flopping around like a dead fish, and yet here they are, jumping a 1.10 m course. :roll_eyes:

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been around at least since 1912… Helen Preece of GB while still in school, she attempted to enter the modern pentathlon in the 1912 Stockholm Summer Olympics .For a short time, she was the only woman slated to compete at the games. She was ultimately not allowed to complete

LONDON, July 6. - Englishwomen are expecting Miss Helen Preece, a 15-year-old horsewoman, to accomplish great things at the Olympic games at Stockholm this month.

Miss Preece, who will be the only female representative at the games, has won fame here as an expert horsewoman and athlete generally, and her abilities are not [un]known in the United States. At New York in November last, at the Madison Square Garden Horse Show, Miss Preece won outright the $1,000 gold cup, open to the world for riding, in addition to many other “blues.”

“I have entered for several contests there,” she said, “but my particular ambition is to carry off the first prize in the great competition. That is a stiff proposition, I admit, since it includes five different events: A cross-country ride of 4,000 meters (about two and one-half miles); riding over a course of 5,000 meters; swimming 300 meters; fencing and shooting with a revolver at a target twenty-five meters distant.

“A formidable list, you will agree, and all have to be won, but father and friends, under whose guidance I am now undergoing quite an arduous course of training, seem to have every confidence in me, and, of course, I myself am enthusiastic.

“I have obtained special leave of absence from my school in Hertfordshire, and my day’s work now commences as early as 5 o’clock every morning, and only ends with bedtime at 8 o’clock.

“A varied program is mapped out for me each day, but it always includes riding, shooting, swimming, running and walking practice, and today I have been put on a special diet, also, so that I should be absolutely fit for the Pentathlon on July 11.

“The one thing that worries me is the fact that I shall be the only woman competitor in this particular contest; it may make me nervous.”because she was a girl.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120529024133/http://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/summer/1912/MOP/mens-individual.html

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