• Modern pentathlon The most difficult yet: five indoor sports

  • Nicolás García The trampoline jumper who suffers from vertigo

  • Tokyo 2020 Schedule and Finals

A hundred Olympians waiting for seven hours at the Barajas Airport and eyes on one of them:

Aleix Heredia

. Last Saturday, the flight that was to take a large part of the Spanish delegation to the Tokyo Games was delayed due to being overweight and if there was a candidate to take the blame, it was him. Or more than him, poor thing, his sport. The modern pentathlon, perhaps the most complex discipline of all, demands suitcases and suitcases and more suitcases. Two swords, a laser pistol, riding boots, running shoes, swimming goggles, a helmet, a fencing mask, a riding crop ...

"I have two huge suitcases and sometimes I still have to put something in my coach's luggage. Luckily I have never left anything, but if it doesn't arrive, if the airline loses something between airports, they make a big mess for me," he admits. Heredia, whose specialty needs a long explanation.

Beyond history, the idealization of

Pierre de Coubertin

to create the most complete athlete of the early twentieth century, there is the current format. "The modern pentathlon is made up of athletics, swimming, shooting, fencing and horse riding. There are five sports in one and each one is adapted in a specific way. For example, athletics and shooting are contested at the same time , with four races of 800 meters combined with rounds of shots. Fencing is also peculiar because the 30 participants face each other with a single touch, they are very fast combats. And the equestrian seems like a normal jumping competition, but it has the oddity that we don't know the horse, every time we start from scratch. The only thing recognizable to the viewer is the 200-meter swimming strokes, "says the pentathlete before facing the most obvious question: How does one get into the modern pentathlon?

"The environment was not the healthiest"

In Spain there are only 441 licensed practitioners and, in fact, one of them is her sister,

Laura Heredia

, who was one step away from qualifying for Tokyo, but was left out at the last minute.

The best Spaniard ever was

Jorge Quesada

, eighth at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, and in the last two Olympic editions there was no participant.

"I played football, like many, and I even spent a season in Espanyol's fry, but the environment was not the healthiest, let's say. I decided to try an individual sport that suited me better and in my school, the Llor de Sant Boi [the same as the

Gasol brothers

] had a pentathlon section. As I always ran the school cross, I started with athletics, then with swimming and now fencing, shooting and horse riding, "says Heredia. , also combines sport with work. Graduated in Medicine from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), he completed a master's degree in Aesthetic and Anti-Aging Medicine and is now employed part-time at the Dra. Escoda clinic, in Plenas Ramblas.

During the first months of the pandemic, he even considered going back to work at the Vall d'Hebrón Hospital, the center where he had practiced for the race, but finally his sports career and the uncertainty that loomed over the Games then weighed more.

In just 24 hours, despite the complexity of his sport, he left the CAR of Sant Cugat, where he resides, and set up a gym at his parents' house with a treadmill loaned by Reebok, an exercise bike that he miraculously found in Wallapop , a table to do crunches, several dumbbells and much of his extensive material to train.

"It has been a difficult preparation, but I cannot complain about how it has gone. At this point I only sign back from Japan with something around my neck," Heredia concludes.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Spain Olympics

  • sports

  • HBPR

Tokyo Olympic GamesMohamed Katir, the sudden Spanish phenomenon of the middle ground who already aspires to gold in Tokyo: he reads poetry, trains in a field and his father arrived in a boat

Tokyo Games Nicolás García, the trampoline jumper who has vertigo

Tokyo OlympicsJesús Ángel García Bragado: "Without cheats I would have an Olympic medal"

See links of interest

  • Last News

  • Tokyo 2021

  • 2021 business calendar

  • Home THE WORLD TODAY

  • Master investigative journalism