Quotes of the Day

Lying in bed after the opening ceremony of the 2000 Olympics, her face aching from smiling so much, Georgina Harland thought, "Yes, this is for me." The irrepressible 22-year-old from Canterbury had gone to Sydney as a reserve for Britain's women's modern pentathlon team. She made up her mind that at the next Games, she'd be more than a spectator. She began to push herself harder in international competitions, and won three in a row. After she took bronze at the 2001 World Championships, she was ranked No. 1 in the world. And that's when she almost missed out on the Athens Games.

At the 2003 World Championships Harland watched Sydney bronze medalist Kate Allenby make the British team while she fell short. "Because I was No. 1 in the world everyone just expected me to qualify for Athens, but I started questioning what I was doing. I lost my confidence," says Harland, 26. Again she put in the extra effort, and was repaid with a victory in the European Championships that clinched her place on the Olympic team. Her confidence is back — Harland wants an Olympic gold, and to get it she has been training six to eight hours a day, six days a week, every week of the year. As a modern pentathlete, she has to excel not in one sport but in five: running, swimming, riding, fencing and target shooting — all on the same day. "I love the way it challenges every part of you, mentally and physically," she said, during a break between sessions last week at France's élite Institut National de Sport et de l'Education Physique. "I've learned so much about myself from it."

The winners of individual events grab the biggest headlines. But if Harland can prevail on Aug. 27 (though Szuzsa Voros from Hungary and Ukraine's Victoria Tereshchuk are likely to be her main challengers), she just might prove herself the world's most versatile athlete. Steph Cook, who won gold for Britain in Sydney, believes Harland's got a real shot.

The sport was conceived in 1909 by the founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, to test all-around athletic ability. He imagined a 19th century army officer sent on horseback to deliver a message, but the horse is shot from under him; he then has to shoot an enemy, fight off another with his sword, swim a river, then run across country to complete his mission.

In Athens the event will go like this: the day starts at 10 a.m. with the shooting competition, a .177 caliber air pistol at a 17-cm target 10 m away; competitors are given 40 seconds to fire off 20 shots. Then it's off to the fencing hall, where they pick up épées for a series of one-touch round-robin matches. A short breather, then it's swimming 200 m freestyle before moving on to the show-jumping arena, where they meet for the first time the horses they are to ride. Like some kind of nightmare speed date, horse and rider have to get to know each other in 20 minutes before tackling 12 daunting fences. And finally a 3,000-m run.

Running is Harland's favorite event; she prefers to start from behind and burst through at the end. When she was 13 her father roped her into a tetrathlon (pentathlon minus the fencing) he organized for the local East Kent Hunt Pony Club. That was the niche the talented swimmer, rider and runner had been looking for. In 1995 her exceptional talent was spotted by national pentathlon coach Istvan Nemeth, who persuaded her to join the junior squad, saying, "You get to travel the world and all you have to do is pick up an épée and stab a few people." Such violence hardly suits the outgoing, talkative self-confessed chocoholic whose idea of relaxation is a highly competitive game of tennis. "Any sport I do I have to do it 100%," she confesses.

Until recently Harland's only weakness was in the first event, shooting, but over the past year she has set her formidable determination to overcoming the problem. "I've worked really hard at it and have been shooting well all year," she says. Her shooting points, which on a bad day could be as low as the mid 600s, now regularly top 900, almost up with the best. Harland credits her coaches and a supportive boyfriend with helping her get her groove back. "It's all in the preparation," she says, "making a plan, executing the plan and the strategy that works."

This year could be, so to speak, her last shot. International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge is keen to reduce the size of the Games — there will be more than 10,500 athletes, and 5,500 team officials for the 28 sports in Athens. Modern pentathlon, which doesn't attract big TV viewing figures, could be axed. Harland believes it would be a mistake. Apart from the history of the event — it was first included in the 1912 Games — she says it's a bargain. Spectators "get to see five different events for the cost of one ticket. And we use other people's facilities, the swimming pool, the shooting range and so on. So in terms of building venues, we're a very cheap date."

Harland's passion for her sport doesn't make her cocky. "There are so many things that can pull the carpet from under your feet and leave you flat on your face," she says. But she aims to fulfill the ambition ignited in Sydney. "The atmosphere there was very special, I couldn't get enough of it. This time I'll be going with a job to do, but I hope I'll enjoy it just as much." A medal around her neck would certainly help.

• KATE NOBLE | Paris
• The British pentathlete who's shooting for gold