Pentathlons with Chloe Esposito

Photos By, Kathy Watt

Crazy horses ... and swords

“In modern pentathlon, there’s an owners’ round the day before; it’s the horses’ owners riding the course ‒ they know their horse best. When we get on them, sometimes we get crazy horses; they’re a bit psycho. Some people in pentathlon don’t consider the horse riding very important; they’ll do some training close to the event. I don’t like doing it that way because I like having everything right. It can be that one important competition, and you might get that crazy horse ‒ I want to be as prepared as possible. I was overseas, training in France, and my coach would ask for a horse that stops at the jump, so I could practise and know how to deal with horses like that.

“I have fencing lessons four times a week; three times I’ll fence other people, practising different things ... competitions to 15. The fencing’s not good at all in Australia. We haven’t qualified anyone for the Olympics. When I was over in France, I was training in fencing there, and the structure was so different; just really hard, good fencing training from a young age.”

How many coaches?

“I don’t have five ... my main coach is my Dad; he coaches me in swimming, running and shooting and is my mentor. He goes away with me to competitions. Then I have a coach for fencing and horse riding, who was my Dad’s coach as well, Laslo Petho. When I was on the Australian shooting team, I used to go to camps and have a shooting coach, but now it’s Dad who helps me there. When I go to the track to run, I have a track running coach.”

Pent-up energy

“On competition day, I normally just get ready for the next event, relax, have something to eat, listen to some music ‒ just think about my next event. I listen to anything I have on my iPod; I have some pump-up music that I listen to before the fencing and swimming to get me ready.

“Some people have naps. You want to rest as much as you can to get ready. In a competition, the fencing would start at, say, 8.30am and the combined would finishat 6pm or 6.30pm. Normally, all the events are close together. In London there’ll be three different venues: the fencing’s at one, the swimming’s at the aquatic centre and the horse riding and the combined are at a different place. But they’re all close to one another, a five-minute bus ride or something.

“It can get tiring through the whole day, but that’s what you train for. You’re backing up for your next training session, so during the day, I’m doing three or four training sessions, to make it like a competition: training and having a rest, training and having a rest ... it’s full-on, but you’re always ready for competition day ... when you have that extra buzz ... ”