Pentathlon Chloe Esposito Photos By, Kathy Watt

Final-day focus

“I’ll be at the Opening Ceremony at London. I’ll be there for two or three days, then I’m going to France; I’ll stay there for eight days’ training, then come back to London before my event so I won’t get distracted in between. A lot of people will be finishing while I haven’t even started!

“It’s one day ‒ the last day ‒ and that’s it. I think I’ll be there three days before the event. I’ll stay at the [athletes’] village ... everyone will be partying. It’ll be a bit hard, but I’ll be okay.”

Which five sports? 

“No one really ever knows. At school, everyone was like, ‘What’s pentathlon?’ People don’t see me as someone holding a gun or fighting with a sword, so people are like, ‘Oh, really?’ A lot of people are shocked.

“To tell you the truth, if I wasn’t doing pentathlon, I don’t know what sport I’d be doing. I wouldn’t be fast enough to be a swimmer or runner of Olympic standard. I really enjoy the shooting side; I’d probably get into that. And you can do shooting for ages.

“A lot of the girls I compete against are about 27, 28; some compete into their 30s ... Pentathlon is so expensive – training, travelling. This is the first year I’ve ever received funding from the Australian Olympic Committee. Before that, Mum and Dad were paying for everything.

“In Europe, one of their competitors’ biggest advantages is regular competition. We have, really, no competitions here. They’d be competing against each other all the time there. I went to Europe for eight weeks this year and it was: competition, training camp, competition, training camp ... My brother is starting pentathlon, and Dad is telling him, ‘If you want to be number one, you have to be based over there.’”

– Jeff Centenera