POSTED: Friday February 18th 2011
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

YOG Champion's Pistol Donated to Olympic Museum

At the 1st Youth Olympic Games in Singapore last August, Leydi Laura Moya Lopez, an 18-year-old Cuban, was crowned champion of the women's modern pentathlon. Recently, through the intermediary if the International Modern Pentathlon Union (UIPM), the a

The final that Lopez used this pistol in was the first ever Olympic Modern Pentathlon Competition that was conducted using laser pistols and the first ever Modern Pentathlon Youth Olympic Gold medal. So this pistol is extremely significant to the history of Modern Pentathlon and the Olympic Movement.
Leydi Laura received a donor's diploma and the pistol joined The Olympic Museum's collections.
But Leydi Laura Moya Lopez did not only mark the history of these first YOG by winning gold. Judge for yourself…
For the mixed relay that closed the Modern Pentathlon competitions, and by pure chance, she was paired up with American athlete Nathan Schrimscher. The pairing is widely believed to be the first time in decades that athletes from Cuba and the USA have teamed up. The young man declared: "It's the people. I really don't know all the politics and stuff. The people - we're all the same. She doesn't speak much if any English. I don't speak any Spanish. But we got along really well…we both do speak pentathlon!"
The two youngsters finished 16th out of 24. When the two met in Argentina a few months earlier, during the qualifying events, they didn't think much about it. They took a couple of photos. They went on their way. Then, in Singapore, they made history…

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Keywords · modern pentathlon · youth olympic games · olympic

Name: Matt Pound
Organization: Union Internationale De Pentathlon Moderne - UIPM
Email:
Phone: +377 9777 8555
URL: http://www.pentathlon.org

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