Vyacheslav Aminov: “Modern Pentathlon schools are full now. People are on the waiting list”

The Modern Pentathlon European Championship will be launched on 17 July in Szekesfehervar, Hungary. President of the Russian Modern Pentathlon Federation (RMPF) Vyacheslav Aminov shared his expectations of the forthcoming tournament.

– The Russian team will go to Hungary in full composition, said the head of the RMPF. – We plan to compete for medals in all five types of the program.

The European championship will open with the women’s relay. Perhaps, for the first time, we lay hopes on it. Previously, the level of the women’s team did not allow us to count on serious results, so in the relays we usually tried our young, promising athletes. But now the situation has changed. The team leaders, Gulnaz Gubaydullina and Uliana Batashova, are showing high results. Gubaidullina, last year’s world champion, currently heads the UIPM rating, ahead of Olympic champion Chloe Esposito (Australia), European champion Anastasia Prokopenko (Belarus) and 2016 world champion Charlotte Kovac (Hungary). This season Batashova was among the winners at one of the   World Cup stages. In short, we have reason to expect a successful performance in both relays, like never before.

– What about the mixed relay?

– Lyudmila Kukushkina and Kirill Belyakov will perform. We take the mixed relay very seriously, because in the future it can become the Olympic discipline. It is no accident that our Kremlin Cup is now held in this format.

– As usual, the men’s team will be led by the Rio Olympic champion Alexander Lesun, right?

– His leadership positions are unshakable, although step by step other guys start to play leading roles in the team, for example, the 2014 Youth Olympic Games winner Alexander Lifanov and two-time World Championship winner Kirill Belyakov. It took us much time and effort to decide on the mixed relay, but still we gave preference to more experienced Belyakov.

– To what extent did Alexander Lesun’s victory at the Brazil Olympic Games  contributed to the popularization of the Russian Modern Pentathlon?

– All our schools are full, people are on the waiting list! This year we are opening a sports school and a regional branch of the Modern Pentathlon Federation in Smolensk as a successor to the State Academy of Physical Culture, Sports and Tourism. And in 2019, a unique sports complex, which has no analogues in Europe, will be put in commission in the Northern administrative district of Moscow. Its infrastructure will accommodate all five types of pentathlon under one roof! Such arena will allow us to increase the number of pentathlon athletes in the local sports school by 2.5 times. Taking this opportunity, I would like to thank the Ministry of Sports and Moscow government , represented by Sergei Sobyanin, for having believed in our sport and giving the green light to such a grandiose project.