Coffee Table Book of: Modern Pentathlon (Hardcover)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Modern Pentathlon is a large format book of modern pentathlon, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: the fencing piste, the pool, the obstacle course, the laser pistol range and the run, the kit and how it is made and cared for, the old days of the sport, and a few pentathletes seen far off in plain dark clothing or fencing white.

The kit is laid out plain: an epee seen from above and close at its guard, a mesh mask, a padded glove with a long cuff, a white jacket, flat soled fencing shoes, a body cord and the red and green scoring lamps, a laser pistol and its target, goggles on a folded cap, a starting block, a pool ladder, a lane rope and a line of flags over the water, running shoes, marker cones, and the walls, rings, bars and beams of the obstacle course.

The making and care follow bare blades on brown paper, a walnut grip carved to the hand, a curved timber wall half built, boards and rope for new obstacles, a lane rope rolled onto its reel, a pool drained for cleaning and white jackets drying on a line, with a skipping rope, a mark on a wall and wall bars for training.

Then the places, empty at every hour and in every season: fencing halls in frost, rain, lamplight and late at night, pools at first light, at night and in winter steam, ranges in spring rain, fog and under lamps at night, run paths through parks, beech woods, wheat, blossom and snow, and a few small pentathletes far off, fencing, swimming at dawn, shooting at dusk, running in the mist, swinging along the rings, lunging on a beach and jumping a fence on horseback.

Short notes run through the book, on the five parts and their rules, the kit and how it is made and cared for, and the history of the sport since its first days: the swim is 200 metres of freestyle, which nearly every swimmer races as front crawl, pool water is kept clean and clear by filters that run day and night, fencing shoes have flat soles, made tough at the heel and inner side for the lunge, and a fencing jacket fits close, with a strap that passes between the legs to hold it down.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a hardcover with the art printed on the case.