These words are mine and mine alone, but it felt like there is a very important need to help connect the dots for everyone in the adventure racing community in "Plain English" in relation to: Modern Pentathlon / Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne (UIPM) / World Obstacle (WO) / Fédération Internationale de Sports d’Obstacles (FISO) / International Adventure Racing Association (IARA) / Adventure 1 (A1) / Obstacle Course Racing (OCR) / Olympics (IOC) and more…

Ok so now the more detailed version:

Who is UIPM? UIPM is the Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne, also called World Pentathlon. They are essentially the governing/sanctioning body for the sport of Modern Pentathlon; a sport that has been in the Olympics since 1912. Since 1912 it has involved competitors competing in 5 different sports with scores/times applied to each and the highest scorer after all 5 is the winner. Since 1912, those 5 sports were: Fencing, Swimming, Shooting, Running & Equestrian Show Jumping.

Very important note though, after a series of controversies, the IOC (Olympics governing body) announced they would be dropping Modern Pentathlon from the Olympics in 2028, and it was not listed on the original slate of sports announced for Los Angeles 2028.

Why are these 5 sports even together in modern pentathlon anyway? Back in 1912, the sport was modeled after Track & Field’s multi-sport competitions like the decathlon; but Modern Pentathlon was designed to model skills needed by a soldier of that time. This means they can’t just pick any sport to be in the list of 5, to hold the theme they picked disciplines akin to “soldier’s skills.” And it stuck with those 5 sports/disciplines for a century. 

So what was the controversy, and why was Modern Pentathlon getting dropped from the Olympics? Modern Pentathlon has long had a highly debated place in the Olympics, specifically in regards to the equestrian/horse-riding component. Equestrian itself has long faced arguments about whether equestrian/horse riding should be considered a competitive sport at all in the Olympics; but additionally in Modern Pentathlon (vs. other equestrian sports in the Olympics), horses are randomly assigned to athletes at the competition. This causes a lot of problems when athletes want to win a sporting event with a horse they just met, especially if the horse might have other ideas. Over the years there have been claims of animal abuse and danger to the athletes; but the arguments/controversy all culminated at the 2020 Olympics (technically took place in 2021) when there were a series of incidents where multiple athletes were unable to control their randomly assigned horses…and then a very news-covered incident specifically, a coach punched a horse that was refusing to jump the course…

That was the last straw for the IOC (Olympics governing body), because there was so much bad press already, and now video proof of animal abuse, and the Olympics are supposed to be all good and earthly. The Olympics are planned almost a decade ahead so Paris 2024 was already set, but when the IOC initially announced the list of sports for the 2028 Olympics, it did not include Modern Pentathlon. UIPM went into a full-on panic mode. They needed to decide how they could get back in the IOC’s good graces and back in the Olympics. I’ll cover the “why be an Olympic sport?” part below, but the important detail for now is that UIPM quickly decided the solution was to figure out what sport they could replace equestrian with to appease the masses/criticism. 

So what did they go with? Basically in quick order they asked for new discipline/sport submissions/ideas, and then without much consulting with their own athletes, in 2022 UIPM decided to replace equestrian with Obstacle Course Racing (OCR), partnering up with World Obstacle (WO) who at the time was making the most claim to being the global Obstacle Course Racing governing body. 

Did it work? Yes, but also To-Be-Determined. At the 141st IOC Session in Mumbai, India in 2023, the IOC voted to approve the inclusion of the sport back for 2028 with its new format where obstacle course racing replaces equestrian. Therefore the Paris 2024 Olympics would be the last time Modern Pentathlon included horse riding. 

HOWEVER it is not all sunshine and rainbows, this insanely quick changeover absolutely pissed off almost all modern pentathlon athletes because suddenly they are being told they need to learn a completely new sport than the one they trained their whole careers with; the 2 sports (equestrian and OCR) are not even remotely similar. At the same time many in the obstacle course racing community hated this news as well, because they rightly feel that obstacle course racing is its own sport; and while OCR is finally getting some sort of inclusion/recognition by the Olympics, its only getting in as a ⅕ component of Modern Pentathlon. This means if an obstacle course athlete wants to go to the Olympics they now need to also learn and get good at fencing, shooting and swimming… so to be clear this has not been all sunshine and rainbows. Most modern pentathletes are annoyed with many Olympians saying they are done with the sport after Paris-2024, many in the OCR community are unhappy, but for WO/FISO it feels like a win cause now they now have their foot in the door to the Olympics for OCR; and UIPM is happy cause Modern Pentathlon is back in the Olympics… and you know, it’s also likely much cheaper to not have to transport horses around the globe anymore… 

Wait a second, what does any of this have to do with Adventure Racing? The connection point is World Obstacle (WO / FISO). World Obstacle, institutional name Fédération Internationale de Sports d’Obstacles (FISO), is an international governing body for obstacle sports (e.g. Ninja Warrior, Spartan Race, etc. type stuff). It was only formally founded recently in 2016 and pretty much its primary goals since inception have been growth via getting obstacle course racing into the Olympics. So what’s the connection to AR? Well, in October 2020, World OCR changed its name to World Obstacle claiming this provided a more inclusive name so they could manage a more broad-scope of “obstacle” related sports thus claiming anything “Ninja”, OCR and then randomly over the next few years trying to include Adventure Racing.

Very specifically in December 2021 WO/FISO blindsided the AR community by announcing themselves as the governing body for Adventure Racing and that they had selected Adventure-1 (A1) to be the new official World Series for adventure racing. This type of stuff went on/off through the next few years and would eventually include surprise invitations to all the national federations and race directors for meetings not remotely previously explained like the following:

Countless people in the AR community were blindsided by all of this and tried to get more information in this time. Rushed meetings sometimes happened at times when most couldn’t attend so everyone rightly complained and basically said WTF? Very publicly people complained about WO/FISO's tactics. Seemingly ignoring all of this input, they continued and in 2023 announced the following meeting to really start trying to codify everything for WO/FISO and get buy-in:

By now more of the AR community made a point to attend the “meeting” but it lacked any real discussion and the result was about the same, WO/FISO just moved forward with whatever they wanted, basically ignoring everyone’s concerns, and the AR community was understandably livid at this point. 

An entity that no one in AR heard of before, and an entity everyone felt strongly had no business being associated with AR just announced itself king and was now trying to bulldoze over anyone else… and they always made sure to tell people their big selling point: they were somehow going to get Adventure Racing into the Olympics (will get into this more later).

So what happened? One very good thing came out of all this. Adventure racers and race directors got together, in a very public fashion at the end of 2023 and discussed and then voted in a very public forum with global representation to officially form the International Adventure Racing Association (IARA) with the stated goal: “To support the development and growth of Adventure Racing representation in countries throughout the world, define and elevate global standards in terms of fairplay, safety, quality, sustainability and protect the ‘spirit of adventure’ in Adventure Racing.”

12 National AR Associations have formally stated support for IARA as the global governing body for AR, representatives from 9 additional countries who do not yet have national associations also formally stated their support for IARA as well. To be clear, that is pretty much all of the major countries that have active adventure racing representation right now. 

After that happened in late 2023 honestly WO/FISO went quiet, and UIPM did too (but they likely went quiet mostly due to the fact they had an Olympics to get through in Paris). Then cut to present day, in October 2024 it was discovered that UIPM added wording to its own UIPM Congress documents that it intends to encompass “standalone disciplines of Obstacle sport not limited to ninja, obstacle course racing (OCR), and adventure racing.” This wording appears as part of a nomination at their next Congress to a potential merger of UIPM and WO/FISO.

...so now we’re back at it again…

But these sports have nothing to do with each other, why is World Obstacle and UIPM repeatedly trying to claim ownership of Adventure Racing? Believe it or not, this is hardly the first or hundredth time there has been a fight over who the official governing/sanctioning body is for a sport. No sport has a king, no one is THE only organizer of a sport. As noted a bit above, for decades boxing has had multiple sanctioning bodies and thus why you hear about multiple different champions of the same weight class (IBF, WBO, WBA, WBC) and so-called “unification fights” where champions of different sanctioning bodies match up. Cycling has had UCI vs USAC. American football once had the NFL vs the USFL, Basketball had the NBA vs ABA, IndyCar racing had IRL vs CART, and the list goes on.

In fact, see if you can find the irony here… Obstacle Course Racing is no different, there are currently competing organizations who claim to put on the "OCR World Championship," and in addition to that The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) actually tried to stake a claim to be obstacle course racing/parkour’s governing body in 2017. The irony here is insanely rich, because back then everyone in obstacle course racing was mad and/or absolutely flipped out and it fell apart, with athletes rightly proclaiming: Gymnastics has no basis at all in coming out of nowhere and trying to take ownership of their sport… 

Why did FIG try to take over OCR and why is WO/FISO trying to claim adventure racing? Why are there all these competing sanctioning bodies for sports? If you are the governing body of a sport, you get control, money/support, and a sort of certified “legitimacy.” While some sports have surely outgrown the Olympics and don’t need the Olympics (see: NFL, NBA, Soccer/futbol), for other sports like Modern Pentathlon, OCR & AR it sort of all comes back to the Olympics. 

Disregard the World-Coming-Together aspects of the Olympics for a second; the Olympics is a MASSIVE commercial endeavor that is seen by billions around the world; it also makes billions of dollars $. If your sport is included in the Olympics then it not only gets the marketing via eyeballs around the globe watching the sport, falling in love with the sport, people deciding they want to try the sport and can help the sport grow; but straight up it also gets financial support from not only the IOC, but in the form of sponsors, partners, etc.

So of course any sport would want to be included in all of that. But they can't all be included... I’m sure you’ve noticed there are TONS of sports that are not in the Olympics. Why? Simple: logistical capacity.

The IOC awards hosting of the Olympics to a city/region, and The Olympic Games needs to happen across a 2-week window, and there is no city/region on this planet that could handle having ALL the sports of the world going on in the same 2 week period. So the IOC limits the number of athletes/sports for each Olympics. Forget sporting venue availability, it's just impossible to find lodging/housing/transportation for all of the athletes, coaches and fans for all of the world's sports due to infrastructure constraints. So the Olympics has to limit how many sports/athletes it has at each iteration. It’s fairly structured these days, there are 28 sports that are considered “core sports” the IOC has deemed these will be a part of the Olympics. They are not set in stone forever however, some sports can lose their standing and new ones can come in. Boxing is actually being dropped in 2028 after a full century of inclusion since 1920.

Oh yeah, didn’t break dancing just get dropped by the Olympics after only just getting added in 2024, RayGun ruined it for everyone!! 

Actually not quite, breaking was already not gonna be in L.A. 2028 before Paris 2024 even happened. This is because breaking was never technically dropped, it wasn’t a core sport. While the IOC established 28 “Core” sports for the Olympics, the host nation gets to pick 4 additional sports to add (so long as those sports meet the IOC criteria).

Paris/France 2024 chose skateboarding, sport climbing, surfing and breaking (break dancing) as their 4 non-core sports to add. L.A. 2028 simply didn’t pick breaking to add it for theirs. Similarly Tokyo/Japan 2020 added Karate and Baseball/Softball but Paris didn’t. Los Angeles/USA has actually chosen Baseball/Softball, Lacrosse, Squash, Cricket, and Flag-Football. Why did L.A. get to choose 5? Cause Boxing has been dropped as a core sport because it is embroiled in an insane amount of corruption and controversy these days, and none of the boxing governing bodies have been deemed acceptable by the IOC. 

OMG this all so fascinating, I never knew so much about the Olympics, but can we get back to Adventure Racing? Yes, let’s connect the pieces.

What do the Olympics have to do with why UIPM/WO/FISO, etc. are trying to claim Adventure Racing? Well, the IOC has very specific rules about which sports it will and won’t allow in the Olympics, and the process goes roughly like this: 

1. The IOC requires that the activity have administration by an international non-governmental organization that oversees the sport. 
2. Once a sport is recognized to have a governing body, it moves to International Sports Federation (IF) status with the IOC.
3. The sport’s IF must then apply for admittance by filing a petition establishing its criteria of eligibility to the IOC.
4. The IOC may then admit an activity into the Olympic program in one of three different ways: as a sport; as a discipline, which is a branch of a sport; or as an event, which is a competition within a discipline.

Step 1 is what WO/FISO was trying to steamroll everyone with back in 2023, and I guess why not try because until then Adventure Racing did not have an "international non-governmental organization that oversees the sport." It’s worth noting there are TONS of sports where the IOC recognizes an international federation/sport, but they simply have not attempted or passed all the way through the steps. Bowling and Chess are both recognized by the IOC as sports, but they do not compete at the Games because they’ve never made it through all the steps.

So if WO/FISO/UIPM essentially just got over-ruled by the AR community's recognition of IARA as the international governing body for Adventure Racing, why are they continuing to do this nonsense in 2024? Well, let’s look further at steps 2-4 in the IOC process; it has caveats in how sports can get added: standalone, as part of another, etc.; and they not only have to sort that out, but there are actually 35+ criteria that go into moving through steps 2-4; I won’t go through all 35 criteria, but they can be grouped into main categories like so:

• Literal Logistics
• # of athletes/coaches, days needed for competition / can it fit in a 2 week window, coordinating schedules/getting participation of best athletes, etc.
• Value added to Olympic Movement
• Does it play well on TV / is it watchable on TV? Youth Movement - Is it predominantly competed by younger participants (remember at every Olympics they announce it as the “Youth of the World” coming together), does it appeal to younger people (e.g. future spectators/participants).
• Institutional Matters
• The sport’s IF must adhere to World Doping (WADA) standards and test its athletes as such. # of National Federations who recognize the IF, # of World Championships held to date, # of federations that recognize the World Championship, other sports/disciplines the IF governs not part of its Olympic proposal, finances/health of the sport, health safety record, code of ethics / fairness issues, etc.
• Popularity
• Number of registered athletes, ticket sales, media attention, TV coverage, host country popularity, digital media. Parity: the # of countries/federations that have won the World Championship previously, (translation: is 1 country dominating / winning all of them?). And lastly, diversity: many will quote this formerly published rule: "must be widely practiced by men in at least 75 countries and on four continents and by women in no fewer than 40 countries and on three continents." 
• Business Model
• Costs to host/venues, costs to broadcast, revenue potential from sponsors, licensing etc.

And if you read through that it all starts to make sense now. Specifically the Institutional Matters section about # of athletes, countries, federations, disciplines under a governing body. 

If you are a governing body trying to get one of your sports included in the Olympics, (like say you are WO/FISO/UIPM trying to get obstacle course racing added); then it is incredibly beneficial for you to claim Adventure Racing to try and look more legitimate because it looks like you govern more sports/disciplines/athletes. 

So Adventure Racing isn’t on the road to getting into the Olympics? No, and this is where it gets mostly annoying.

WO/FISO has long made claims that they are going to legitimize adventure racing and put it on the path to the Olympics, but this has always been complete nonsense, and this is the part that truly annoys many of us who know the details, because its “snake oil salesman” type stuff. It's either intentionally misleading or just being wrong via unintentional stupidity; and it sort of doesn’t matter which, because at this level neither is acceptable. To be very clear: it's important to recognize that adventure racing in its current most commonly known and accepted form will NEVER be in the Olympics.

I LOVE adventure racing, it’s why I race and why I’m an Adventure Race race director who is constantly working to break down the barriers to entry and get more and more people into the sport; but let me be very clear: There is a 0.0% chance that adventure racing is going to be included in the Olympics. There is also nothing wrong with that, there are countless sports that are not in the Olympics, and they are doing just fine. But for any of us who have ever actually read through the 35+ criteria the IOC uses, Adventure Racing has big problems with more than half of them. 

To pick off just some of the biggest hurdles: It’s near impossible to broadcast adventure racing on live television for both logistical and competitive reasons; it’s also near-impossible to sell spectator tickets in any form of the current sport. If TV coverage and ticket sales = $0 for adventure racing, then that means $0 in revenue for the IOC, which = no adventure racing in the Olympics.

Those 2 biggest roadblocks alone will keep adventure racing from the Olympics, but to be clear if you go through the other 33+ criteria, AR doesn't meet the criteria for many of the others too, and they can’t be solved without massive changes that would end with almost a different sport altogether. In essence, AR can be recognized as a sport with an international federation, but it’s near impossible for it to become an Olympic sport. 

Surely UIPM / WO / FISO all have to know this, so why do they keep claiming they’re going to make it an Olympic Sport and why do they keep claiming AR under their governance? Without knowing directly, you can still surmise that they must know the above details; so then the motivation appears to be an effort to boost numbers/influence/standing: # of sports they manage, # of athletes/federations under their sanctioning/governance, # of nations they represent, # of sponsors and venues they can claim are part of their sport, etc. all in the eye of making things look better for the IOC. Even if you know AR isn't making it to the Olympics, if you claim adventure racing is part of your governance you can point to plenty history, and to a major motion picture about your sport starring A-list actors, a recent long-form show on Amazon Prime, etc. So of course someone might try to appear as though AR is under their governance. 

So what should adventure racers and AR race directors do?

Well its sort of up to you. Its important to recognize there are some that don't mind UIPM/FISO/WO and don't see a problem. People can have differing opinions, sure, but the tact and tactics of UIPM/FISO/WO to date have not gone over well. Coming from experience watching some other sports tear themselves apart in the past... I would say AR needs to avoid wasteful division.

Adventure racers and RDs can just say no if they don't want to participate with UIPM/FISO/WO, a governing body that at the very least seems to be completely ignoring the requests of the majority in the AR community. If you feel that way then you don’t have to do races that get associated with them. Put your support behind the adventure races, race directors, and organizing bodies you trust. Hopefully good sense can prevail and AR can avoid any more time/effort wasted on all this, and instead work together so a rising tide can lift all boats.

At the end of the day, most in the AR community would like to go back to what we do, which is adventure racing.

UIPM and WO/FISO can get back to their own sports. If OCR could get into the Olympics as a stand-alone sport, I actually think it would be very cool, it's definitely a great sport, and a great made-for-TV sport, just look at the success of the Ninja-Warrior franchise; but again, it just has nothing to do and no history with adventure racing. 

I wish UIPM luck with Modern Pentathlon; they have a hard road in front of them after making such a massive change to their 100+ year old sport. Only time will tell if it survives in the Olympics… and hopefully none of the athletes/coaches try to punch a stubborn obstacle ;)