Beijing lands Obstacle World show in a row

Article posted by Coliseum, April 25^th, 2025

Image: UIPM World website

Beijing (China) will host the first four editions of the Obstacle World Championships from 2025 to 2028, the World Pentathlon (UIPM) said recently.

‘Reuters’ stated that the maiden World Championships will launch in October this year featuring Obstacle athletes from the Pentathlon and Obstacle Course Racing (OCR) communities competing on 100 meters, 400m and three km courses.

The Obstacle World Championships, organized by the World Obstacle, are international competitions for various obstacle sports including Obstacle Course Racing (OCR) and Ninja-style events. The World Obstacle (based in Lausanne, Switzerland) is the international governing body for these sports. The Championships are held at the world and continental levels.

The World Pentathlon or the International Modern Pentathlon Union (Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne), commonly known by the acronym UIPM, has been the international governing body of modern pentathlon since its foundation in London (UK) in 1948. Its headquarters are in Monaco and it has 115 national federation members in 2018 and 133 members in 2024.

The Modern Pentathlon and Obstacle Course Racing (OCR) communities represent distinct but potentially converging athletic disciplines. The Modern Pentathlon involves five disciplines: Fencing, swimming, equestrian show jumping, laser run (shooting and running), and obstacle course racing. The OCR, on the other hand, is a sport where the athletes navigate a course with various physical obstacles. While the Modern Pentathlon integrates various skills the OCR focuses solely on overcoming obstacles.

‘Reuters’ further stated that the introduction of the competition follows the full integration of the Obstacle discipline into Modern Pentathlon.

This development has been backed by the establishment of the UIPM Obstacle Commission and an Obstacle Task Force (a committee established to integrate obstacle course racing [OCR] into the Modern Pentathlon) which received approval from the UIPM Executive Board recently.

The UIPM Obstacle Commission is a newly formed entity within the Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne (UIPM) focused on integrating the obstacle racing community into the UIPM movement and exploring the commercial opportunities.

Remarked Rob Stull, UIPM President, “The creation of the UIPM Obstacle World Championships is an important step in the ongoing integration of this popular urban sport into our movement. Having successfully introduced Obstacle as a new Pentathlon discipline it is key that we also provide exciting opportunities for the existing OCR athletes to test their skills in a high-quality competitive environment. It’s going to be amazing to see how the pentathletes measure up against their OCR specialist counterparts in October.”

The championships will be hosted at an upgraded sports complex which was designed for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

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