Modern pentathlon-American chasing gold in third sport

By Erik Kirschbaum

BEIJING (Reuters) - American Sheila Taormina will be the featured attraction in the modern pentathlon on Friday as the first Olympic athlete to compete in three different sports.

Taormina is the 2006 U.S. national champion -- in the sport involving swimming, horse riding, running, fencing and shooting. She won a 4x200m relay swimming gold in Atlanta in 1996. She was also sixth in the triathlon in Sydney and was 23rd in Athens.

Taormina, 39, took up modern pentathlon -- a microcosm of the Olympics that was created by Pierre de Coubertin -- when she discovered no one had ever competed in three different sports. She made a first quickly aborted effort at cross country skiing.

"She's mind-boggling," said Dragomir Cioroslan, a director on the U.S. Olympic committee.

"She's an exceptional athlete and unique individual, meticulous and able to organise everything so well," added Cioroslan, who was once high performance director for the U.S. in modern pentathlon. He was an Olympic weightlifter for Romania.

France's Amelie Caze, winner of the last two world championships, is the favourite. Aya Medany from Egypt and Britain's Livingston are also expected to be in the medal hunt.

The men begin the gruelling one-day competition first on Thursday before Friday's battle among the women in the sport that de Courbertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, developed to simulate what a soldier would face while delivering a message.

Russia's Ilia Frolov, an excellent runner, won the world championship in June but Hungary's Viktor Horvath, who had to abandon that competition with a leg injury, was the 2007 world champion and leads the world rankings.