Horse riding together with fencing was the biggest draw for him, which attracted him to modern pentathlon fifteen years ago. “You don’t just get into these disciplines, and they have a huge charm,” says the thirty-one-year-old Kuf today.
In a decade and a half, he experienced a number of changes with his sport, which has been in the Olympic program for over a hundred years, but the most fundamental one officially began to be born only after the Olympics in Tokyo, when the international federation decided to eliminate parkour.
The competitors’ protests were in vain, in November the congress finally approved the change. “Unfortunately, it has been confirmed that our federation is capable of enforcing whatever it sets its mind to,” lamented Kuf.
What were the federation’s arguments? The situation from the Tokyo Olympics, when the German Annika Schleuová hit a horse on which she lost her chance for gold, was often mentioned, as well as the risks arising from the fact that competitors draw horses. Furthermore, less availability of horses and parkour in some countries, and above all the ultimatum from the International Olympic Committee, which should have requested a change.
Even now, however, it is not certain whether the pentathlon will remain in the Olympic program after Paris 2024. A new discipline in the form of steeplechase should increase its chances with the American organizers in Los Angeles 2028.
Photo: Filip Komorous
Jan Kuf at the World Cup final in Ankara.Photo: Filip Komorous
But it won’t be an athletic obstacle course, more of a Ninja Factor-style race. That is, arm wrestling, running up a U-ramp, climbing over walls… So maybe attractive to the audience, but a completely new skill that for many pentathletes will mean the end of their career hastened.
“It is such a fundamental change that will affect many athletes that they will leave the modern pentathlon,” he suspects. “And for many young people, the riding discipline was one of the main reasons why they did the modern pentathlon at all,” he knows from personal experience. And even his new discipline within the pentathlon does not appeal.
“I can imagine trying it out for fun with friends. But not that I would have learned the discipline at such a level in four years that I wouldn’t be afraid to present it at the Olympic Games,” admits Kuf, who will be 33 years old after the Paris Games and originally considered that he could continue his career in two years Extend.
“Juniors are supposed to compete in this new discipline from next year and will have two years head start. So even if I wanted to stay, I think it’s an unsolvable problem in top sport,” he suspects.
And so he looks all the more towards Paris, which could be his farewell to his career. And for the modern pentathlon, a derniere in its classic form. In addition, in the birthplace of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games and the spiritual father of this sport, and in an attractive environment near the Palace of Versailles.
“Where it started, it will end,” smiles Kuf bitterly. In Mixzón, he also describes how the athletes themselves tried in vain to prevent change, or in which sport he could still be realized after his pentathlon career.
