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Do all successful athletes have some kind of sermonette they preach to themselves to get those beneficial chemicals fizzing? Of course they do. Has anyone heard a built-in dial-a-psych like Mike Storm's? Not recently. Storm is a 24-year-old pentathlete from North Arlington, Va., who lives in San Antonio because that is the site of the nation's only pentathlon training center, run by the Army at Fort Sam Houston. Money is no problem; a group of U.S. business men interested in the pentathlon underwrites his training expenses generously enough — about $1,200 a month — so that he can fly to competitions in Europe. It is easy to see why Storm caught their attention.
Talking about his sport, or sports, he sounds as if he is success fully trying to get himself to sign on the dotted line: "One of my first trainers told me that the man who wins the medal in the pentathlon is the finest athlete in the world. That has inspired me ever since. My God, the pentathlon is the ultimate competition. Not in any other competition do you find such diversity. The decathlon is all track-and-field-related, but in the pentathlon you're fencing, riding, swimming, running, shooting. Not only does it require power, speed, strategy and the ability to endure pain, but it also requires tremendous mental control. In a sense, the modern pentathlon is the greatest training you can do in life."
This blond and blue-eyed muscular young man says that he made up his mind to be an Olympian when he was seven, competing first as a swimmer, then moving to the bewitching variety of the pentathlon at 14. He visited the San Antonio training center that year, and returned summers during high school and his 4½ years at the University of Pennsylvania (where, while putting himself through a ferocious training regime, he also studied economics, political science and financial management). His extraordinary motivation is an asset in a sport whose audiences generally consist of coaches and a few patient relatives. "Am I sacrificing something by doing this?" he asks. "No. Those people in the private sector are the ones missing out. They will never know what it is like to stand in the Olympic arena, see the flag raised and ..." Will he get a medal? He is given only a slight chance. But whatever the outcome, Storm has no regrets. "Values are permanent. Discipline is permanent. Personal growth is permanent. I know that whatever I'm doing 80 years from now, I'll be doing it right."
When Storm is 104, the typical fencer that age will still be taking lessons from his coaches. Or so say the fencers; their sport is passionate, intensely personal, a fierce relationship between eternal mentors and lifelong learners. At 22, Jana Angelakis, the youngest member of the five-woman U.S. foil team, is ranked No. 2. She is studying with her third coach, a Soviet named Emmanuil Kaidanov who coaches the men's team at Penn State, where she is enrolled on a full athletic scholarship. Kaidanov, she says, is teaching her the why of fencing. "Mine has always been a mental game, as fencing has to be, but I've never been as conscious as I am now. My weapon," she says with satisfaction, "is penetrating the target more accurately."