WONDER WOMEN
GIRLS POWER TEAM GB AS THE MEDALS POUR IN
TEAM GB’S women led the charge with five medals in Tokyo yesterday as Britain jumped back into fourth place in the overall standings.
Laura Kenny became the first British woman to win gold at three different Games with her fifth track cycling title, alongside Katie Archibald in the madison.
Kate French won the modern pentathlon, Laura Muir took home 1500m silver and there were bronzes for the 4x100m relay and hockey teams.
The men’s 4x100m team had to settle for silver after losing to Italy by just 0.01sec.
The way that the madly, deeply challenging sport of modern pentathlon can blow up on you in the showjumping round was all too clear as Britain’s Kate French prepared to ride.
The equine component of a sport which also puts competitors through rounds of fencing, swimming, running and shooting — the last two of them simultaneously — had already ended the hopes of a Brazilian and an Italian who couldn’t coax their horses over the hurdles.
Russian Gulnaz Gubaydullina, who had just set an Olympic pentathlon record in swimming, also promptly ploughed into a fence and vanished without trace.
French had to admit after storming to gold that her horse Clintino, who she had only met 20 minutes before competing — those are pentathlon rules — wasn’t actually the kind she likes riding.
‘I like more of a forward-going horse. This one I had to get after a bit more,’ she said. ‘My riding instructor had to get after me to ride it forward. She gave me confidence in how to ride the horse. We did well together in the end.’
Though that instructor, Jabeena Maslin, was the toast of Team GB last night after an 18th gold medal, it does seem to be the luck of the draw with the horses.
German Annika Schleu, who was ahead of the field after the swimming, was weeping as she entered the arena on a horse deceptively called Saint Boy. The unfortunate Gubaydullina had ridden the same horse. Schleu’s worst fears were quickly confirmed.
Amid all that mayhem, you flinched for the horses. But French’s calm, near-immaculate round of the hurdles set up one more challenge: completing four laps of a winding 800m track at speed while stopping each time round to hit a target five times with a pistol.
French had to wait 15 seconds before heading out in pursuit of Russian Uliana Batashova. But from the moment she strode off, there didn’t seem to be the remotest doubt about her taking gold.
The shooting range can do for you, just like the horses. You’re stuck there until you hit a target five times from 10m. French coolly executed the task, overtaking Batashova after the first lap and striding home 100m clear.
There was something incongruous about this modest, quietlyspoken 30-year-old from Bath being the conqueror of a sport which the founder of the Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, viewed as ‘a verifiable consecration of the complete athlete’.
De Coubertin wanted a contest to simulate a 19th-century cavalry soldier behind enemy lines — riding an unfamiliar horse and fighting enemies with pistols and swords before swimming and running to safety.
French’s journey here actually began on the pony club circuit. her parents are both strong riders. One of her primary school teachers also encouraged her to try schools biathlon, which involves swimming and running. Then she gravitated to the pony club sport of tetrathlon, which adds shooting and has contributed to a strong tradition of British female pentathletes.
The best of French’s disciplines is actually fencing, though her modest performance in that on Thursday left her eighth overnight with a lot to do.
She set a personal best of 2:10.18 in the 200m freestyle swimming heat which she won in a pool set up on the field where Britain’s rugby sevens women’s team were strutting their stuff just last week. But that didn’t shift the dial. It was all on those last two events.
The gripping finale made you wonder why this event had been consigned to the tail end of the Olympics in a venue miles from central Tokyo.
Pentathlon has grown accustomed to that. It doesn’t score highly for TV audiences, which means a restive IOC are constantly fiddling with the format.
Originally, it took place over four
or five days but at London 2012, the running and shooting were combined into the ‘laser run’. Here, a meaningless additional fencing round has been added so that athletes do an element of everything every day.
Paris 2024 wants to go nuclear — compressing all five sports into a 90-minute series of heats and finals resembling It’s a Knockout.
French had actually expressed doubt about that format ahead of these Olympics. ‘I haven’t spoken to anyone who has anything positive to say about it yet,’ she said.
‘Training would have to be very different. I’m not sure I’m willing to start from scratch. I don’t know whether I will be in Paris to see these changes come in.’
Last night, she seemed to have mellowed. ‘I can’t say I’ve really tried the new format yet so I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘Gosh, this medal has been on my mind for a long time. It’s always been a dream and I can’t believe it has come true.’
Britain’s women have medalled in every year they’ve competed in this sport, except Rio 2016.
Joseph Choong is fancied to become the nation’s first male medallist today.
But it was French and that unknown horse that everyone wanted to talk about.
Some pentathletes describe techniques including blowing up their horses’ nostrils to calm them in the critical moment, though French had a more homespun outlook.
‘I can’t say I really do any of that,’ she said. ‘I give the horse a pat, walk around, get a feel of him and then have a few jumps.’