Pentathlon Chloe Esposito Swim Photos By, Kathy Watt

Fire and finish

“This is the first Olympic Games where the modern pentathlon running and shooting will be combined. It’s a bit of a disadvantage to good shooters because it’s not a precision shooting event any more. It’s fast shooting – if you can shoot a seven [inside the fourth-smallest circle] it’s a successful shot, whereas the old system was score-based. If you shot more tens [bullseyes] it was better for you, but now you just need a ‘seven’ in the combined.

“I didn’t like the new system at first, but it’s probably one of my favourite events to watch now. It’s really exciting. You can make up massive amounts of time in the shooting and overtake a lot of people, and a lot of people drop back. If you’re a good shooter, you’re still advantaged by getting your shots off well and quickly ... you have to get five successful shots, but you have a maximum of a minute and ten seconds. Once it hits a minute-ten, you have to go, but if you’re there for a minute-ten, that’s really bad.

“They changed it to get more spectators ... It’s a lot more exciting, this combined event, than the normal shooting and running. At one competition we went to, the girl who won silver started in 16th position. When I was in China recently, I started in 20th, and moved up to 8th.

“The shooting definitely lifts your heart rate; your arm is moving around a lot more. I focus on holding my breath while I take my shot, which is hard at times, because you’re going max in the kilometre and you’re puffed out. In the running, it’s alright for me; I just run the kilometre as hard as I can. That’s what I train for, getting to the shooting range at max heart rate.”

Jill of all trades

“You need to be an all-rounder, but it’s also really good to have one strong event. One of the British girls, Samantha Murray, is a really strong swimmer, which puts her right up there.

“The horse riding doesn’t really make or break your overall performance, unless you fall off, but the points roughly stay the same with everyone. The running/shooting is the big one where people make up time. But if you have a really strong event and the rest are even, it’s a real advantage.

“Everyone is different. Some of the girls I compete against are really good at fencing, but their swimming is not that good ... For me, I have to work on not the physical side, but the mental side of fencing. I’ve got all the moves and know what to do, but it’s all up in my head.”

Week in, week out

“I’ll swim six times a week, getting up at 4.30am and starting at 5am at the pool for a two-hour session. I run four times a week; that’s all different types: a track session, a long run, some hill work, interval training ...

“One of the runs is a run-shoot. I don’t normally shoot with a laser pistol [which will be used at London 2012]; I shoot with a .22 sport pistol. The target’s 25m away and I’m using live ammunition – I do that so it strengthens my wrist; when I go back to laser, it’s easier to shoot. I run to the back of the shooting range, there’s a big grassed area at the Sydney International Shooting Centre where they had the 2000 Games, and I can do kilometre loops, then come in and shoot.

“I practise shooting five times a week, horse riding three times a week and fencing four times. I’ll go out to the riding stables and we’ll jump every lesson, and I’ll ride three or four different horses in the session so I get a feel for different ones.

“I do weights three times a week, and I also get a massage once a week to recover from my training sessions. The weights I do are for my arms, based around swimming, so I can pull through the water faster.

“The time I dedicate to each sport is probably even – I might do a little less running, only because training for that goes a lot faster than swimming – I’ll swim for two hours, and the run might be one hour. Swimming would take up the most time; I do a lot of kilometres in the water. And there’s a lot of travel time in between.”