UIPM Secretary General’s Message: Integration, innovation and enjoyment!

Everything we do in UIPM, we do it with tomorrow in mind. Our traditions and heritage are important but without a plan for the future, a vision for the type of sport that our children and their children can enjoy, we are history.

Two recent UIPM competitions, the 2023 World Championships for U19 and U17 athletes, illustrate this point.

When we watch athletes compete in the new version of Modern Pentathlon, especially in the integrated Obstacle discipline, we see the joy of discovery and the potential of a future in which our sport becomes more relevant and more popular within the Olympic movement.

And in terms of securing that future, we are almost there. Some hard work remains but, by the middle of October, we will know if the incredibly hard work already undertaken was worth it.

My message to the hundreds of young pioneers who competed in Alexandria and Istanbul is simple: keep training and keep believing.

Here are some reflections about the success of these two competitions and how we can improve in future, starting with the UIPM 2023 Junior World Championships in Lithuania in September.

Geographical diversity / accessibility

More African countries participated in the competitions, and the athletes were very proud of their performance and attendance, most of them participating for the first time in a five-discipline Pentathlon.

Coach / athlete feedback

The feedback received suggests a majority very satisfied with the Obstacle course. In the words of one coach, “All my athletes were very happy with the competition and although we had athletes at different levels of development, all of them enjoyed the challenge and experience of doing OCR.”

Attractiveness / spectator reaction

We saw screaming, cheering and clapping during the whole Obstacle event, everything came so naturally, and there was an impulsive excitement about the level of athletic skill and vocal support for the athletes to overcome each obstacle.

I never saw a Modern Pentathlon competition with such a high volume of spectator energy and noise.

Understandability

The head-to-head format is easy to understand, athletes competing for the fastest time and challenging each other to set a new competition record – at this early stage, also a world record – and to prove they are the most capable of getting to the top of that finishing wall.

Organisational efficiency

A standard course that varies with a couple obstacles from competition to competition creates a consistency of organisation and presentation arrangement, and is especially helpful with keeping costs down, making everything absolutely predictable for organisers.

Is there any space to improve?

• Of course, from event to event we are learning and improving, together with the evolution of athlete skill levels.
• The two competitions have enabled us to reflect on what could be improved to arrange better events in a lot of other aspects too.
• UIPM already raised the bar of the general event organisation together with local organisers compared to previous years. Although each LOC has its unique difficulties and specialties, we clearly see where to go for the future…