Saint Boy would rather not: Modern pentathlon (Tokyo Stadium, 6/8/2021)
You don’t need a clairvoyant for this forecast: At the upcoming Winter Games in Beijing, the German Olympians will primarily win medals in those disciplines where Vorsprung durch Technik applies. They bring state-of-the-art bobsleighs and racing sleds to the start, can rely on first-class material for ski jumping and Nordic combined and will therefore probably be that decisive bit ahead of the competition. That is normal. But wouldn’t it be more interesting if all starters with identical models had to race down the ice channel or jump off the bakken? It would definitely be fairer.
A four-legged friend by the name of Saint Boy can be seen as something like the occasion for an indirect anticipation of this kind of visionary sporting equality of opportunity. The horse that was drawn by the modern pentathlete Annika Schleu at the Summer Games in Tokyo refused to work and thus broke the gold dream of the leading athlete after three sub-disciplines. They were images that went around the world: an animal refusal that cost the Olympic victory. In a sport that Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games, had devised, a combination of pistol shooting, epee fencing, swimming, horse riding and cross-country running.
If Coubertin was still alive, he might have long since merged the Nordic combination of ski jumping and skiing with biathlon, which means that the athletes would have to shoot large targets with small-bore rifles as they strive for the target slope from the lofty heights of the take-off table. Or, to make things even more spectacular, the recurve bow could be used to shoot moving targets on the sides of the ski jumping hill – in the tradition of Olympic archery, when arrows were once shot at live roosters, chickens and chicks.
Denier Saint Boy, of all things, has done a horse service to a sport that is already leading a shadowy existence. Reforms, reforms must come about – these were the demands of the media after the incident. Animal rights activists came on the scene after the 31-year-old Berliner had briefly tried the padded crop. Her trainer Kim Raisner’s “Hit it!” Was probably too much of a good thing. There was talk of open cruelty to animals, there was abuse and abuse, and a complaint was filed. The prosecutor took up the matter.
Who knows which circles the “Saint Boy” case could have drawn if one had taken into account the stresses and strains it means for horses to have to fly halfway around the world for a competition. From Germany to Japan, for around 20,000 euros per four-legged friend. Who can even afford that? How do the horses feel about it?
The emotional discussion about reforms in the modern pentathlon continues. It is still uncertain whether riding will soon be a thing of the past and whether a lap on a racing bike or a mountain bike will have to be completed in the future so that this sport can remain Olympic. But maybe, at least it would be desirable, changes in the modern pentathlon will mean more in other sports. There are enough occasions. For example, one could forbid »technical doping«, that is, declare war on indisputable competitive advantages with the help of better materials.
It would be a turning point, a radical statement against the escalating material battles in high-performance sport. One possibility, therefore, of eliminating some of the significant injustices in the sporting conflict between athletes from rich and poor nations who cannot afford high-tech. Perhaps it is naive, but a renaissance of barefoot runners in the style of Ethiopian Abebe Bikila, who ran bare-footed to Olympic gold in Rome in 1960 and Tokyo in 1964, is at least conceivable. And would have something.
