A bronze-medal performance in Toronto over the weekend at the Pan American Games earned an active-duty pentathlete a chance at another medal podium — one the world will be watching.
Spc. Nathan Schrimsher, 23, took third place in the one-day, five-discipline modern pentathlon Sunday, amassing 1,421 points during fencing, horse jumping and swimming competitions, plus a final combined event where athletes pause during a cross-country run for pistol shooting. That finish, 23 points behind gold medalist Charles Fernandez of Guatemala, qualified him for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, filling one of two possible Team USA slots and making him the first official member of the American Olympic team more than a year before competition begins.
Sgt. Dennis Bowsher, a 2012 Olympian, took 10th in Toronto. He and Spc. Logan Storie will be among the competitors for the second Rio berth in the months ahead: Bowsher brings experience, while Storie’s record-setting 200-meter freestyle times have vaulted him into contention.
Spc. Nathan Schrimsher’s finish at the Pan American Games earned him the first official qualifying berth for Team USA at the Rio Olympics next year.
Photo Credit: Tim Hipps/Army
All three athletes are members of the Army’s World Class Athlete Program, where soldiers with elite-level skills are allowed to prepare for national and global competitions while on active duty.
“It’s amazing to be a soldier and compete for the United States,” Schrimsher, a motor transport operator, said in a Team USA news release. “It’s a big name we wear as athletes and I just want to represent it as best I can.”
The century-old “modern” version of the event has military ties, with the not-yet-generalfuture Gen. George S. Patton participating in its Olympic debut in Stockholm in 1912. He finished fifth.
