The modern pentathlon is getting too soft - that's why people aren't watching it.

Michael Smith - It took me a minute because I had not seen the modern pentathlon in a couple of Olympic cycles.

Boy, they have really soy-boyed it.
The pentathlon was launched in 1912 with skills important to soldiering. It was designed to simulate the experience of a 19th-century cavalry soldier behind enemy lines: he must ride an unfamiliar horse, fight enemies...they condensed it from five days to one, and includes these skills:
- Swimming: This is a single 200 meter freestyle swim
- Laser-run: ...Athletes run 3000 meters, stopping four times to shoot at targets with a laser pistol...

• Here’s what I propose:

- Swimming: Loaded with a fifty-pound rucksack, the competitors must trudge through a course designed after a Florida swamp, swim an alligator infested river...
- Swordsmanship: A fight to first blood draw with cavalry sabers. Contestants to be ranked by severity of injury or death...
- Riding: Athletes must enter a paddock with wild horses, lasso one, saddle break it and ride it one hundred meters across a finish line...
- Shooting: Each athlete is issued a flintlock pistol, lead shot and a horn of black powder. They each contestant must run a one hundred meter fenced in lane from the start to the shooting station. Three seconds after the starting gun is fired, an angry Grizzly bear with a taste for humans is released from a cage at the starting line...
- EOD Challenge: the athlete is faced with an improvised explosive device with three minutes on the timer and must disarm it. No need for ranking here, the winner will be obvious.
I think my version is more watchable.