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| Modern pentathlon at the 2010 Summer Youth Olympics | |||
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The mixed team's Modern pentathlon competitions at the 2010 Summer Youth Olympics in Singapore were held on August 24, at the Singapore Sports School. [1] [2]
The modern pentathlon is an Olympic sport that comprises five different events; fencing, freestyle swimming (200m), equestrian show jumping, and a final combined event of pistol shooting and cross country running (3200m). This last event is now referred to as the laser-run, since it alternates four legs of laser pistol shooting followed by an 800m run. The event is inspired by the traditional pentathlon held during the ancient Olympics; as the original events were patterned on the skills needed by an ideal Greek soldier of the era, the modern pentathlon is similarly patterned on events representing the skills needed by cavalry behind enemy lines.
The 2010 Summer Youth Olympics were the first edition of the Youth Olympic Games (YOG), an international multi-sport and cultural event for youths based on the tradition of the Olympic Games. Held in Singapore from 14 to 26 August 2010, it was the first International Olympic Committee-sanctioned event held in Southeast Asia. The Games featured about 3,600 athletes aged 14–18 from 204 nations, who competed in 201 events in 26 sports. No official medal tables were published, but the most successful nation was China, followed by Russia; hosts Singapore did not win any gold medals. Most unique features of the YOG, such as mixed-NOCs teams and the Culture and Education Programme (CEP), made their debut at the 2010 Games.
Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island city-state in Southeast Asia. It lies one degree north of the equator, at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, with Indonesia's Riau Islands to the south and Peninsular Malaysia to the north. Singapore's territory consists of one main island along with 62 other islets. Since independence, extensive land reclamation has increased its total size by 23%. The country is known for its transition from a developing to a developed one in a single generation under the leadership of its founder Lee Kuan Yew.
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Each team contained one male and one female pentathlete. Only the fencing, swimming, shooting and running portions were done at the Youth Olympics. The results of each of the four segments of the modern pentathlon were converted into points scores based on a par value of 1000 points per event. Competitors doing better than par would receive more points. At the end of the first two segments, the points would be calculated and the pentathletes would be handicapped for the final segment based on their scores such that a simultaneous finish in that segment would result in identical overall scores.
The first segment was a mass round robin one touch épée, the second was a 2x100 metre freestyle swimming relay and the final segment was combined running and shooting where athletes ran the 2x1500 metre relay and shot using the laser pistol.
The modern épée derives from the 19th-century Épée de Combat, and is the largest and heaviest of the three weapons used in sport fencing.
Freestyle is a category of swimming competition, defined by the rules of the International Swimming Federation (FINA), in which competitors are subject to few limited restrictions on their swimming stroke. Freestyle races are the most common of all swimming competitions, with distances beginning with 50 meters and reaching 1500 meters, also known as the mile. The term 'freestyle stroke' is sometimes used as a synonym for 'front crawl', as front crawl is the fastest swimming stroke. It is now the most common stroke used in freestyle competitions.
