Winning pair plan to put their Olympic sport back on map
GB modern pentathletes Jo Muir and Kate French aim to nail Tokyo spot this week, they tell Tom Morgan
Jo Muir knows exactly where she stands in sport’s nature-versusnurture debate. The modern pentathlete aiming for gold in today’s Europeans in Bath has got here via sheer Scottish grit.
“When I started athletics at 12, I actually wasn’t very good at all,” she says. Last place in an 800metres club race in Carlisle a year later really sticks in the craw. “I even embarrassed my mum,” she adds, recalling a humiliating family trip across the border from Castle Douglas.
At such an impressionable age, many would give up. Muir, however, was spurred on by trailing behind her age group at Stewartry Athletics Club in Galloway, explaining that it triggered her so-called “sadistic” instinct for self-improvement.
“I would be running, doing the reps, but not getting any rest at all because I was slower than anyone else,” she says. “But I just wouldn’t give up because I was just so determined to get better.
“After a while it came together and I loved it. From then on, I remember committing myself. I just became very much in to pushing my body to the limit, just seeing how far I could go with it. It seems pretty sadistic, but I used to love the feeling of training really hard and healing afterwards. It
kept me going and I improved a lot.” Within months, she was winning club races. “When I put my mind to things I’m very stubborn and I don’t stop until I’ve got to where I want to be,” she says. “I had a really good running coach, Mike, who guided me through from coming last to winning Scottish titles. It got me to the standards I am today.”
Instead of deciding on a full-time track career, Muir opted for a discipline where she can juggle her running ability with her passion for equestrianism. Her mother was a show jumper, and Muir was introduced to pentathlon through her local pony club. “I was late to starting fencing,” she says. “That’s my weakest event. It was definitely the pony club, triathlon and running that got me involved in pentathlon.”
Her never-say-die running attitude in athletics has helped her to lead the fight to get her marginalised sport more attention.
Modern pentathlon has featured at every Olympic Games since 1912. British women have won five Olympic medals since 2000, but Rio was the first time over those 14 years that there was no British representation on the podium.
The 24-year-old graduated from Bath University in 2015 and now trains there full time at the elite Sports Training Village, with another Bath graduate, Kate French. The pair came away with medals from the recent World Cup: French winning individual gold and Muir mixed relay gold; and both are medal hopes for Tokyo next year. Muir and French recognise the stakes are high, and it is clear no sport is completely safe after organisers of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games excluded another established medal, shooting, from the programme.
French, 28, said: “Shooting has been in for years and years so it’s a shame. Pentathlon comes under threat most cycles to be honest because it’s such an unusual sport. It’s not so popular in terms of the amount people know about it, yet it’s one of the core Olympics sports. I think, for that reason, authorities must recognise its importance and keep it going.
“To be able to do all those things well should be celebrated. The five Olympic rings represent us.”
French, from Kent, and Muir have formed a close friendship, and are backing each other to be among the medals in Bath today. “It’s just about having a solid day across the five disciplines,” says French. “That will really put us in contention for medals and hopefully a team medal as well.”
An Olympic spot for Team GB will be secured if either of the pair – or fellow Brits Francesca Summers and Jess Varley – finishes in the top eight. Like Muir, French, who won silver in last year’s Europeans, was introduced to pentathlon through the Pony Club.
“We are really fortunate we came in that route because riding is the hardest thing to pick up,” she says. “A lot of people come in through only running backgrounds and then try to pick up riding. I would be terrified.”
In Britain at least, modern pentathlon success has been dominated by women, with GB having never produced a men’s individual Olympic medal.
Next year, that is likely to change through Joe Choong, the reigning World Cup Final gold medallist, and Jamie Cooke, the world champion. French said the friendly gender rivalry was spurring her on. “In the past it’s always been the women that have outdone them, but the men have come through and are doing pretty amazingly at the moment,” she said. “So we need to start pulling some results out the bag. There is a friendly rivalry but nothing serious.”
Muir, meanwhile, is hoping her against-the-odds path into elite sport will inspire other youngsters to try modern pentathlon. “It’s really important we are talking about the sport,” she says. “Modern pentathlon is a wonderful combination of things.
“If you are really good at a number of things but not sure what, pentathlon gives you so much opportunity.
“It’s so different because you’ve got that variety. It’s a sport for everyone.”
‘When I started athletics at 12, I actually wasn’t very good at all. I even embarrassed my mum’