Senior's pentathlon comeback ends

By ANN GREEN

Gannett News Service

ATHENS, Greece - Chad Senior of Fort Myers, Fla., completed a two-year comeback in the modern pentathlon Thursday with a 13th-place finish at the 2004 Olympics.

Senior, 29, who gave up the sport after the 2000 Sydney games, said the grueling competition involving five events in nine hours left him feeling like he'll hang it up for good this time.

``I'm disappointed. I don't think I'll keep going,'' he said. ``I suspect I won't be back.''

Russia's Andrey Moiseev took the gold medal, winning three of the five events. Lithuania's Andrejus Zadneprovskis took silver, and the Czech Republic's Libor Capalini won bronze.

The U.S. had the ninth-place finisher in Russian-born Vakhtang Iagorashvili, who immigrated to the United States in 1991.

The Greeks make much of inventing what has become the modern pentathlon. So there were multiple references at the Goudi Olympic Complex to Aristotle's musings on pentathletes. They are ``the most perfect sportsmen,'' according to Aristotle, because they combine ``strength and speed in beautiful harmony.''

In Aristotle's day, pentathletes ran the length of a stadium, threw a spear and a discus, jumped and wrestled.

The disciplines required in the modern pentathlon are shooting, fencing, swimming and riding a horse that the competitor gets to know for all of 20 minutes before the start of a show-jumping competition. Then to conclude the day, there's a run of 3,000 meters.

Senior's specialties are swimming and running. On Thursday he was in 18th place among 32 competitors after shooting and 27th after fencing. He was fourth in swimming, going 200 meters in 2:02.39, to climb to 21st place.``I slipped starting the race and was playing catch-up the rest of the way,'' said Senior, a two-time Olympian and U.S. Army officer. ``So even my best event managed to have a problem today. My back foot kind of went out from underneath me as I jumped in.''

In riding, the pentathletes draw horses at random, then take off on a course with 12 obstacles. Senior rode a gelding named Guelfo del Belagio, but clipped multiple rails.

In the final event of the day, he ran the second best time (9:35.76) but was unable to move his way into the top 10.

At the 2000 Olympics, Senior was in first place after three events when disaster struck in the riding portion of the competition in the form of a reluctant mount that balked at making the jumps. He ended up in sixth place.

Senior gave up the sport after that heartbreak and decided to pursue a military career, going to Officer Candidate School. But by 2002, he had the urge to return to the sport and has been part of the Army's World Class Athlete Program.

The U.S. Army and the modern pentathlon have a rich tradition going back to Gen. George Patton, who was a second lieutenant when he finished fifth in the first Olympic modern pentathlon in 1912.

After one of the Olympics' most taxing days, nagged throughout the competition by tendinitis in his left knee, Senior sounded like a soldier ready for some R&R.

``I'm gonna eat a lot and probably drink some. And I think I'll have some of those Haagen Dazs ice cream bars that they have at the training center. I've been eyeing those all week,'' he said.