Athlete Profile

• Name: Henry Choong
• College: St John’s – 2nd Year
• Degree: Mathematics
• Hometown: London

Henry Choong is a renowned modern pentathlete. He represented Team GB at the 2014 Youth Olympics in Nanjing, China, where he finished in 11th place. A Full Blue, he won the individual modern pentathlon event at last year’s Varsity competition against Oxford, recording the highest points total ever recorded by an Oxbridge modern pentathlete in the process.

He is also a national-standard swimmer and was a key member of the Cambridge University Swimming Club squad that pulled off a shock win at last year’s Varsity gala. Modern pentathlon is a family affair in the Choong household – his brother Joe represented Team GB at the 2016 Olympics in Rio, finishing 10th.

Can you give us a brief summary of the modern pentathlon?

In the modern pentathlon, five sports are combined into one competitive discipline: swimming, fencing, horse riding, shooting and running. The swimming, fencing, and horse riding are completed separately, but the shooting (which is done with laser sights) and running are combined into one event.

The swimming is a straightforward 200-metre freestyle race: the quicker your time, the more points you get. The fencing (which is epée fencing) takes place in a round-robin format – every single competitor faces everyone else – and the more hits you record on your opponents, the more points you get.

The horse riding is show-jumping with 12 fences. You start with 300 points and for every second you go over a prescribed time limit, you lose a point. You also lose points for knocking over or refusing to jump a barrier. After those three events have taken place, the points are added up. Each athlete starts the combined running and shooting event at different times depending on how many points they have amassed.

This means actually that some events aren’t necessarily as important as the others and that blanket consistency isn’t always required. Swimming and horse riding aren’t that important because of the points allocated to them. Given that I’m a decent swimmer, this can be a bit annoying – I’d rather there were loads of points for the swim – but in another respect, the swimming is at least guaranteed for me whereas, in the fencing, you can have good days and bad days, and it also depends on how the other competitors do too.

Training for the modern pentathlon requires access to expensive equipment and a horse – is it therefore resource-restrictive?  

There are certainly some elements where a certain degree of investment is required but, in many ways, that is true of most sports. Indeed, swimming – which might be seen as more accessible – requires sizeable investment on expensive swimming costumes. For me personally, I never owned a horse and always went to a stable and borrowed somebody else’s, which actually wasn’t particularly expensive. I was also subsidised at school and indeed here at Cambridge, the University will subsidise you too.

How did you first get into the sport?

Originally I was just a swimmer. But when I went to my secondary school in year seven, I had to do a bleep test and I did pretty well at that so the school asked me to try the technical elements of the pentathlon – the horse riding, the shooting, and the fencing. And it just took off from there – I did really well at competitions, such as coming 3rd in the under-16 European Championships, and that kind of success makes you want to continue with it more and more.

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What is the hardest thing about this sport?

I always struggle with the shooting – the pressure is immense, particularly when you’re in a good position following the others events and it’s really easy to blow it. In fact, that’s exactly what my brother did at the Olympics: he was in 2nd place before the shooting started!

What traits help facilitate success at the modern pentathlon?

A lot of it is just dedication – there is a lot to practice and a lot to work on, but with good training and good commitment, you’ll go far. Endurance and general hand-eye coordination will come in useful too!

Who is the most famous athlete in the sport?

It’s a huge sport in Russia and the current men’s Olympic champion Aleksander Lesun is a huge celebrity there. It’s also very popular in Brazil too: Yane Marques, who won bronze in the women’s modern pentathlon at London 2012, is very well-known, particularly because the Brazilians don’t tend to get that many Olympic medals.

What is the state of the sport in Cambridge, in the UK, and internationally?

As far as Cambridge is concerned, we need nine men and nine women each year for the Varsity match so we have a squad of about 20 people. Most people weren’t modern pentathlon specialists when they first arrived, but had had success in one of the five disciplines and then decided to try one of the others when they got to Cambridge. After all, so few places offer the means to do modern pentathlon properly that it’s unlikely they would have got to it anywhere else!

In terms of the UK, we have the world number one in the men’s event at the moment – Jamie Cook – but he came 14th in the Olympics after a bad day in the fencing. The funding is actually really good – I used to be paid £9,000 a year when I was at school to do it from either the Lottery or UKSport. It helps that there aren’t that many people who do it, so the maths works out quite nicely. Modern pentathlon always gets decent investment because Team GB has got a medal in it at every Olympic Games since 2000. Even though we didn’t get a medal in Rio, I don’t think there’ll be too much of an impact – we got some top 10 finishes that should help.

It’s pretty popular in Central Europe and Russia, while the French tend to do well too. And as far as drugs are concerned, there’s definitely some in global modern pentathlon circles. Two of the Russians failed drugs tests before Rio so they could only send one athlete. And Ismael Hernandez Uscanga, the Mexican athlete who won the bronze medal at Rio, has also had a doping suspension in the past. As a result, there’s a lot of suspicion going around.

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What is your training schedule like?

I do at least 20 hours of training each week. That tends to comprise of just about an hour of gym work and an hour of horse riding – most of it is the swimming and running. I have a specialist coach for the technical elements, but I also train at individual clubs too. In my view, to improve your skills so that you can compete very well, you should be able to compete with the specialists in each discipline.

How do you reconcile a Cambridge workload and your training schedule?

Personally, I don’t love maths enough to do it all the time – after about two hours of numbers, I’ll need a break. So in those times, I’ll head off to training. I’m also quite lucky that my lectures never clash with training. 

How might somebody interested in the modern pentathlon get involved?

They would get involved through the Cambridge University Modern Pentathlon Club. Our website is a good place to visit and our Facebook page is pretty comprehensive – it has a lot of information. But if anyone has any specific questions about modern pentathlon, they could email women’s captain Holly Mason (hcm48@cam.ac.uk) or myself (hc454@cam.ac.uk).

This interview has been edited for length and clarity