UIPM 2020 calendar: Dates for your diary

The Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne (UIPM) has released its calendar of global competitions for the Tokyo Olympic Games year of 2020.

The 2020 calendar has a strong Asian emphasis, with the three most important competitions taking place in the Far East. Not only will the Olympic Games Modern Pentathlon be staged in Tokyo (JPN) in August, but Seoul (KOR) will host the UIPM Pentathlon World Cup Final in May and Xiamen (CHN) will be the venue for the UIPM 2020 Pentathlon and Laser Run World Championships later the same month.

With eight months to go until the 25th Olympic Modern Pentathlon, 23 female and 23 male pentathletes have now secured a qualification place on behalf of their nations at the Games, with 13 places for each gender still up for grabs.

The latest 12 qualifiers from the 2019 Asia/Oceania Championships and Olympic Qualifier joined 28 athletes from Africa, Europe and the Americas who performed well in their respective continental championships earlier in 2019, as well as six who qualified via the UIPM 2019 Pentathlon World Cup Final and UIPM 2019 Pentathlon World Championships.

The UIPM 2020 Pentathlon World Championships, which will again be paired with the UIPM Laser Run World Championships, will be the last opportunity for athletes to secure automatic qualification for Tokyo. Three places will be available in each gender, giving athletes one last chance to avoid having to rely on the Olympic World Ranking List.

Aspiring Olympians will jostle for position on the World Ranking List throughout the UIPM 2020 Pentathlon World Cup season, which starts in Cairo (EGY) on February 26 before moving to Europe for two legs in Sofia (BUL) and one in Budapest (HUN).

After that, attention shifts to Asia for the two major competitions in May, with many Olympic athletes then spending long periods of the northern-hemisphere summer training and acclimatising in Asia for the ultimate test: the Games of the XXXII Olympiad, where the Modern Pentathlon takes place from August 6-8.

Once the dust has settled on what is sure to be a dramatic and thrilling competition in Tokyo, the global UIPM Sports community turns its attention to youth development and other multi-sports competitions.

Weiden (GER) hosts the UIPM Biathle/Triathle World Championships later in August, with Drzonkow (POL) again staging the UIPM Junior World Championships in September. The season then ends where it began, in Egypt, with the UIPM Youth World Championships (U19 & U17) in Hurghada.

UIPM President Dr Klaus Schormann said: “The race to qualify for the Olympic Summer Games Tokyo 2020 has already been very intense, with many high-level performances in all continents. This will continue during the first six months of 2020 and the whole Modern Pentathlon community is gripped with excitement to see who will qualify and who will perform well at the Olympic Games.

“In 2020 we will have a major focus on Asia and I know we are going to be greeted with a warm welcome, first-class hospitality and spectacular sporting venues in Japan, China and Korea. All of our athletes and coaches are excited based on their experience of Tokyo during the UIPM 2019 Pentathlon World Cup Final and Olympic Test Event.

“More and more people around the world now have a pathway to Pentathlon thanks to the accessibility of our development sports and the appeal of urban, beach and university formats. We are attracting new audiences to our sport and especially younger generations, with more ways to follow our athletes on television and digital channels.

“In everything we do, our global community of volunteers and professionals work hard to preserve the legacy created by our founder, Baron Pierre de Coubertin. We are also guided by the IOC Olympic Agenda 2020, which promotes the importance of gender equality, inclusion and accessibility, sustainability and many other important facets which are now embedded into our sport at all levels.

“At UIPM we promote clean sport and we protect clean athletes, we minimize the impact of our competitions on the environment and our movement uses sport as a vehicle for ideals of education, peace, democracy, tolerance and humanity.

“I hope everybody will enjoy the thrilling 2020 Olympic season that is ahead of us.”

The UIPM events calendar is now updated with all competition dates for 2020. Use the Subsport filter to search for competitions in one sport, eg “Modern Pentathlon”.