Archer fears for Modern Pentathlon

Great Britain Modern Pentathlon chief executive Jon Archer has warned exclusion from the Olympic Games would have a "devastating" impact on the future of the sport.

The International Olympic Committee's executive board will announce on Tuesday which current Olympic sport will be axed from the 2020 Games. Modern Pentathlon and Taekwondo are believed to be most at risk, with the excluded sport automatically joining the list of those sports vying for the spare slot at the Games - a decision which will be made in September.

Having been contested at every Olympic Games since 1912, Archer believes modern pentathlon's deep history within the Olympic movement would leave it vulnerable if cast adrift. Archer said: "This is a sport for which the Olympics are everything, and without it there is very little chance of the sport being able to continue in its current form."

He added: "There has always been a perception that modern pentathlon is not a sport that wishes to modernise, and it does not have mass appeal or commercialism associated with other sports.

"But we believe we have made more fundamental changes over the last 10 years than any other sports, and we had some absolutely fantastic feedback from all quarters over the way the sport was staged in London."

Modern pentathlon was invented by the founder of the modern Olympic Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, and Archer says its omission would give a clear indication of the way the IOC wish the Games to evolve.

He added: "If the IOC were to choose to remove us in many ways we would see that as demonstrating they are moving in a very different direction to the principles upon which the Olympic Games were originally founded."