Air-pistol practice with Heather Fell

“You’ve been watching too many gangster films,” Heather Fell tells me cheerfully. We’re standing in the rain in her back garden, where Fell is giving me a quick lesson in air-pistol shooting. The target is a flip-down metal contraption propped up on the garden wall.

“Legs shoulder-width apart, left hand on your hip, and just squeeze the trigger gently,” she advises, as the wind sweeps in off Dartmoor.

I admit my stance is perhaps a tad Tarantino, my aim consequently poor. But modern pentathlon, the sport Fell has devoted her life to, has a distinct whiff of swashbuckling that appeals to the imagination.

Invented by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic movement, this multi-discipline sport is based on the mission of a fictitious 19th-century cavalry officer, sent behind enemy lines to deliver a crucial message. Against all the odds, he had to ride his horse, engage in sword and pistol fights, swim and run for his life. It has featured in every Olympic Games since 1912.

Heather’s silver Olympic medal

Twenty-six-year-old Fell is Britain’s leading modern pentathlete. Last year in Beijing she took the silver medal thanks to a solid third place in the swim, sixth place in the shoot, some effective fencing and a superb final run in which she almost closed the gap on the German gold medalist. Fell is currently ranked number three in the world.

Her family farm, in a tiny hamlet in the middle of Dartmoor, seems an unlikely base for 25-hours-a-week Olympic training. While most of her peers train at Pentathlon GB’s headquarters at Bath University, Fell rides at local stables, fences at a club in Plymouth and swims at her old school pool. She shoots in her back garden and runs cross-country on the moor.

In the run-up to 2012 she is considering relocating to Bath where, under the guidance of Pentathlon GB’s performance director Jan Bartu, she would be able to immerse herself in the sport. “As much as I love everything here on Dartmoor, I think I’ve outgrown it now,” she says.

Fell and I have just returned from a short, and very wet, run on the moor, both of us forced to slide and splash through muddy puddles and over slippery stones. I see why the high-tech facilities at the university might be tempting.

“I’m so lucky I do a sport that’s so varied,” Fells says, as she describes her daily routine. “I couldn’t imagine training solely for one sport. Also, we’ve got a longer lifespan in pentathlon than athletes do in the individual sports, because it takes so many years to get them all perfect. In Beijing, for example, the Americans had a 17-year-old and a 39-year-old in their team.”

Show jumping

This area of Devon is significant for another successful pentathlete, 2000 Olympic bronze medallist Kate Allenby, whose parents lived just down the road. The Allenbys helped Fell to master air pistols, while her own parents have a stable, so the equestrian side comes easily. As a child, Fell got involved at Pony Club with tetrathlon, which covers all the pentathlon sports except fencing. This remains Fell’s weak spot, although at Beijing she won an unexpectedly good score with the épée.

Before winning her silver medal, Fell had to juggle her sporting career with jobs as swimming coach, physiotherapist and barmaid. “I worked in a pub up the road a couple of days before I flew out to China with the team,” she recalls. Now, with funding from UK Sport, the government sports development agency, as well as sponsorship deals and public speaking, she can train full-time. “A few weeks ago I even pressed the button on the Lottery show.”

Fell spends much of the year touring pentathlons around the world, but receives minimal prize money. “It’s the one sport that really does epitomise the Olympics,” she says. “Olympics is supposed to be about amateur sport, not about the big money sports like football.”

Nevertheless, there have been calls for the IOC to axe modern pentathlon. With guns, swords and horses, it’s hardly the kind of sport that children are likely to take up in the school playground.

Running on Dartmoor

Fearful of this, the sport’s governing body, the Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne, voted at the start of this year to change the format. In the past, each of the five disciplines were staged concurrently. Now, to create a more dramatic finale, the running and shooting have been combined. Pentathletes embark on the final shoot-cum-run in staggered starts, according to the points they’ve earned in the first three disciplines. Whoever crosses the finish line first is the overall winner.

“Because we have to shoot three times and run three legs, spectators will see more changes in the position of the leader,” Fell explains. “So it will be much more exciting at the end of the race.” The purists, however, are not impressed.

Fell knows that to be a medal-winner at the London Olympics in three years’ time, she needs to master the new format quickly. She has set up her pistol target in the back garden and is now practising 1km runs interspersed with shooting sessions. “It’s very different when your heart is pounding and you’re out of breath,” she says.

Later I ask to see the silver medal she won at Beijing. She hesitates, not sure where she left it. She goes off to rifle through her bedroom. “I’m lucky to find it,” she says, emerging with the trophy. “I’m always mislaying it. My boyfriend of four months has yet to see it.”

Inlaid with Chinese jade, it sits heavy in my hand. In three years, with suitably hard graft and a little luck, she may have a gold one, too.

pursuits@ft.com

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The definition

Olympic modern pentathlon features five disciplines, all contested on the same day: épée fencing, swimming (200m freestyle), show jumping (12 obstacles on an unknown horse) and, finally, a combined shooting and running race (three 1km runs, interspersed by air-pistol shooting at a 10m target).

Who does it best

During the early years, Swedes dominated the Olympic events, but after the second world war eastern Europeans took the lead. Women started competing in 2000.