Brought to you by sportsister.com

Jargon buster

Epée: The épée is used in the fencing element of modern pentathlon competitions and is a thrusting sword.

Freestyle: The swimming element is a freestyle race, which in effect means that all athletes favour the front crawl, as it is the fastest stroke.

Handicap start: In the combined event, the event leader starts first and the other athletes begin afterwards in competition order, with the start times dependent on the results of the previous three events.

10m air pistol: The gun used during the shooting part of the competition

Round-robin: The fencing competition uses this format style, where all athletes play each other once with matches decided randomly.

Basic rules

The first element to the sport is fencing, in which athletes are required to fence against every other athlete in sudden death bouts using the épée.

This discipline is then followed by 200m of freestyle swimming and then it’s on to the riding where the athletes have to jump over a 12-jump course.

Athletes are then given a score for each of the first three element of the competition and the total scores are converted into a time handicap.

The handicap determines the starting times for the combined event where the pentathletes run 1,000m, shoot five targets, run another 1,000m and shoot another five targets before running a final 1,000m to the finish line.

The winner is the individual who crosses the line first.