Modern pentathlon was at risk long before a horse was punched. How to update it? | Andy Bull

Simply replacing horse riding with cycling, as proposed, would not tackle the Olympic sport’s anachronistic make-up

Now here’s an intriguing proposition for Guardian readers, a letter from Major General EHH Allenby, inspector of cavalry, aka the Bloody Bull, on behalf of the British Olympic Council, published on Thursday 7 August 1913, calling for volunteers to step forward for the British team in the new Olympic discipline of modern pentathlon at the Berlin Games in 1916. “The competition consists of the following five events,” Allenby explained, “revolver or pistol shooting at a whole figure decimal target, distance, 25m, swimming, 300m free style, fencing, weapon; epee, riding cross-country, 5,000m, cross-country running, 4,000m.” Tempted?

The Guardian, it has to be said, didn’t go in much for modern pentathlon at the time. The very first competition, at the Stockholm Games in 1912, only made a single line at the foot of an article about the continuing controversy in the Olympic tug-o-war, in which the “redoubtable British team”, drawn from the ranks of the City of London police, were disqualified when they fell over in a heap because they lost their footing. But the new sport was a striking idea, designed by the International Olympic Committee’s founder, Pierre de Coubertin, “to test a man’s moral qualities as much as his physical resources and skills”. The winner was meant to be “the ideal, complete athlete”.