The International Olympic Committee’s decision to keep modern pentathlon on the 2028 Los Angeles programme stopped being a maybe on Tuesday. Tokyo Broadcasting System and the Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne (UIPM, the sport’s global governing body) signed a licensing deal that hands the federation the rights to Sasuke and Ninja Warrior obstacles, the same equipment that has fronted prime-time TV for 16 years.
The agreement, announced May 26, closes the loop on a five-year scramble. Horse riding, which has anchored pentathlon since Pierre de Coubertin built the event for the 1912 Stockholm Games, is out. Ninja-style sprint courses take its place. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics produced the image that started the reckoning, and the path from that image to this contract is the actual story.
The Deal That Made It Official
The agreement signed this week is more than a sponsorship. UIPM has licensed Sasuke intellectual property and program elements, including specific obstacle designs, from TBS for use in the new pentathlon discipline. Both organisations also committed to cross-promote the Sasuke franchise and modern pentathlon globally through the LA28 Opening Ceremony.
UIPM President Rob Stull called the deal “an incredible honor.” TBS Executive Officer Katsuaki Setoguchi described it as “a groundbreaking milestone.” Both statements read as corporate diplomacy, but the timing carries weight: the contract closed roughly 25 months out from the LA28 Opening Ceremony, leaving the federation enough runway to standardise course specifications and start televised qualifiers.
- 16 years: Sasuke has been adapted internationally as American Ninja Warrior, on air in the United States since 2009
- May 26: TBS-UIPM licensing deal announced
- 2025: First UIPM Obstacle World Championships held in Beijing
- 2028: First Olympic appearance for obstacle racing as a pentathlon discipline
The federation now controls the visual language of its own sport in a way it never controlled show jumping. Equestrian arenas, stable rentals, and veterinary protocols are gone from its budget. Portable obstacle modules replace them, shippable inside two freight containers and re-settable in under 12 hours.
From Saint Boy to Sasuke
The image that doomed equestrian inside modern pentathlon is from August 6, 2021. German athlete Annika Schleu, leading the women’s competition going into show jumping, drew a horse named Saint Boy. The animal refused the first fence and then several more. Schleu broke into tears as the clock ran out. Her coach, Kim Raisner, leaned over the fence and struck the horse once above its back leg.
UIPM disqualified Raisner from the rest of the Games within 24 hours. German prosecutors in Potsdam opened a criminal investigation into both Schleu and Raisner, then dropped it the following year. A UIPM disciplinary panel found Raisner guilty of breaching competition rules and ordered her to complete a humane animal treatment seminar.
What made the incident different from previous riding controversies was the format itself. Pentathletes do not bring their own horses to competition. They draw mounts by lot 20 minutes before the round, sit on a horse they have never ridden, and must clear a course set at jump heights up to 1.20 metres. The randomisation was always the point. It is also why coaches argued for years that the sport tested luck as much as horsemanship.
By November 2021, the UIPM Congress had voted to ratify removing equestrian from the sport. The IOC followed in 2023 with a unanimous vote to include the redesigned pentathlon at the 2028 Games. This week’s TBS contract did not change that calculus. It branded it.
The New Five-Event Lineup
Pentathlon at the official LA28 modern pentathlon programme will run five events in one venue, scored by points, with the laser run still deciding medals.
| Discipline | Pre-2028 Format | LA28 Format |
|---|---|---|
| Fencing | Round-robin bouts | Round-robin bouts (unchanged) |
| Swimming | 200m freestyle | 100m freestyle |
| Horse riding | Show jumping on a drawn horse | Removed |
| Obstacle | Not contested | Head-to-head Ninja-style sprint course |
| Laser run | 3,200m run plus four shoots | 3,200m run plus four shoots (unchanged) |
The swim cut is the second downward revision since 2000, when the distance dropped from 300 metres to 200. The reduction to 100 metres is the shortest pentathlon swim in Olympic history. Athletes accumulate points across fencing, swimming, and obstacle, then start the laser run with a staggered delay matching their points gap to the leader. The first across the line wins the medal.
Why 650 Pentathletes Signed a Resignation Letter
The removal of equestrian was not a clean consensus. In November 2021, more than 650 active modern pentathletes signed an open letter demanding the resignation of the UIPM executive board over the decision.
The athlete coalition’s grievances clustered around four arguments:
- Riding had been part of pentathlon since the 1912 Stockholm Games and was central to the sport’s identity as a test of an all-around military officer
- The Saint Boy incident was being used as a pretext for a financial restructuring that had been discussed inside UIPM since 2017
- The replacement event was selected before any transparent technical review of alternative disciplines
- The federation had not consulted its own athletes’ commission on a sport-defining change
UIPM countered that the obstacle format was stress-tested at the 2022 Modern Pentathlon World Cup in Ankara, Turkey, and that the federation needed an event with lower costs, lower staging complexity, broader global participation, and stronger appeal to younger audiences. Without those traits, IOC retention for 2028 was at genuine risk. The federation’s official LA28 brochure argues that the new format “examines the whole athlete” while being measurably cheaper for organisers to host.
Some athletes pivoted into the new discipline. Others left pentathlon entirely. By the time the first UIPM confirmation of pentathlon’s place at the LA28 Olympic Games programme was published, a new generation of competitors had filled the ranks, many recruited from gymnastics, parkour, and obstacle-course racing backgrounds.
The IOC Survival Math
Modern pentathlon’s place on the Olympic programme was in real jeopardy after Tokyo. The IOC has been thinning its sport list across two cycles, and pentathlon was flagged for review even before the Saint Boy footage circulated.
What an incredible honour it is for our Federation to be working closely with TBS.
Rob Stull, UIPM President, said that in his Tuesday statement on the licensing announcement. Read carefully, the subtext is operational, not ceremonial. The deal locks in a televisable, sponsor-friendly visual product 25 months before competition. Obstacle racing is the cheapest of the five disciplines to stage, requires no live animals or stables, and fits inside any stadium with portable equipment. Those are not marketing claims. They are line items on a cost sheet that the IOC reviews each cycle when deciding which sports stay.
The 2036 host decision is also looming. Cities bidding for those Games will pick sport programmes partly on infrastructure load. A pentathlon that needs a stable and an equestrian arena is harder to bid for than one that needs a sprint course inside the main athletics venue. India’s push to bring polo back for its 2036 Olympic bid goes the opposite way, leaning on existing infrastructure and historical ties, which makes the contrast useful for federations thinking about what an IOC bid file actually looks like.
The LA28 Pentathlon Schedule
The 2028 modern pentathlon will be held at Valley Complex 2 in the Sepulveda Basin River Recreation Zone, north of central Los Angeles. Two events are confirmed: individual men’s and individual women’s. Athlete count and exact session timing have not been finalised by LA28 organisers, and the federation has yet to publish qualifying quotas.
The obstacle course will run as a head-to-head sprint rather than the time-trial format used on Sasuke and American Ninja Warrior television broadcasts. The distinction matters. Head-to-head means two athletes race identical parallel lanes simultaneously, with the winner advancing through bracket rounds. The TV version is a single-runner timed format. The Olympic version produces a clearer winner on screen and shortens the broadcast window, both factors that the IOC asked UIPM to address.
The swim leg will be contested at SoFi Stadium as the LA28 Olympic swimming venue, an unusual but workable choice for a 100-metre pentathlon swim because the venue’s reconfigurable footprint allows multiple pentathlon disciplines to share infrastructure. Detailed format specifications, including obstacle counts and clearance heights, are expected from UIPM through 2027 according to the federation’s official LA28 transition brochure.
The first Olympic obstacle race is scheduled for July 2028 at Valley Complex 2. The first pentathlon gold medal awarded without a horse on the field will be decided the same week.
