He has been a “super athlete” for 12 years, a sports soldier and will go to the Olympic Games

The first contact of Franco Serrano with sport it was in the pool of José C. Paz’s Club Estrada. He was three years old and his parents took him swimming as a game. At that moment he did not imagine that those first strokes would lead him to become a “super athlete.” The thing is that some time later, when the game had already transformed into a competition, he was invited along with his teammates to try out the game. modern pentathlon. And that sport, conceived more than a hundred years ago by Baron Stone coubertin Aiming to find the “complete athlete,” he caught it immediately.

The Buenos Aires native, then 11 years old, became hooked on the dynamics of a discipline that encompasses five others –swimmingrunning and shooting combined in the laser run, fencing y riding– and was encouraged by the new challenge. And today, with just turned 23 years old, he is the best Argentine pentathlete today and is months away from playing his first Olympic Games.

Having qualified Paris 2024 by finishing fifth in the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games It was the reward for many years of work and enormous dedication to a demanding sport like few others, which forces him into an itinerant routine week by week.

“I spend all my time traveling everywhere, but I’m used to it,” he tells Clarion. And he describes his busy schedule: “I do my work in the gym and my swimming work at the club.” Almaquatic. I go twice a week to CeNARD to do quality athletics training on the track. The rest of the days, since they are long-distance and long-distance workouts, I do them by going out for a run near home. For fencing, I go to French Club and for horse riding, Argentine Equestrian of Merlo. I have my specific coach for each discipline. And the shooting, since I have my laser gun and my target, I can do it anywhere I have 10 meters to position myself and shoot.”

-Training and competing in a high-performance sport is demanding and hard. What’s it like to do it in five at the same time?

-It is difficult and sacrificial, especially in Argentina, where we do not have the best facilities and the budget to be an elite athlete is a complicated issue. Maybe I like to train in the country and I always chose to do so. I trained here and I never went to train anywhere else, only to compete. And that works for me. I have scholarships from ENARD and of the Sports Secretary and I am also part of the Argentinian army as a sports soldier. My family is my most important pillar, because thanks to them I can continue focusing on sport.

Planning the preparation of a tournament and organizing a week’s training are special challenges for Serrano, who adjusts schedules and coordinates with each of his coaches. And he spends a good part of the day practicing one of the five sports that are the center of his life.

“I train between two and three disciplines a day. I swim five times a week, I go running another six times, I gym four sessions a week, as well as shooting, fencing two to three times and horse riding too. Although that can vary from time to time. depending on the time of year you are in and the load you have for each sport,” he comments.

“The technical director of the federation is advising me and telling me how we have to do things. And I am planning with my personal trainers, who know me very well,” he adds.

“Sometimes I train all day and separate the sessions, because I can’t do everything together due to load issues. If I do one discipline after another, I don’t give up. And there are times when I train in a row. For example, I start at 2:00 p.m. with the gym until 3:30 p.m. At 4:00 p.m. I go swimming until 5:30 or 6:00 p.m.. At 6:30 p.m. I go to do running work and finish at 8:00 p.m. It’s about six hours a day“, he reports.

Serrano doesn’t stop for a minute. And not only because his sport leads him to comply with an endless routine. In the few free moments he has left, the Buenos Aires native continues to move.

“Rest is not lying in bed but doing other things. Being at home with my family or hanging out with my friends. I am studying a Bachelor of Administration at the University of Luján and I am organizing my classes and schedules. For me it is important to have a life outside of sports and also continue my studies. And since I am very passionate about horses, going riding – not training horse riding – and being with horses relaxes me a lot,” he says.

-What was it like to go from practicing swimming to doing a sport that combines five very different sports?

-I started little by little with him penta. He was 11 years old when the Argentine federation approached the club where he swam to promote the sport and invite us to try it. In those early years it was just fun. Always very curious. It was training every day and learning and improving. Being able to work with older kids who were experienced in the disciplines helped me a lot. It was a long process, but it paid off.

In that first contact with the pentathlon in the Palomar Military Collegewhere he arrived thanks to the invitation of the Argentine Federation, competed in swimming and running. The following year, he added shooting. At 15 she had already started fencing. And only at 18 did he start horse riding. “That’s how it was: you went up in category and the disciplines were added,” she explains.

-Did any cost you more than others?

-Everyone had their moment of difficulty. It’s not that he was good at one and bad at another. Each discipline had its process, its specific moment in which it was most difficult for me. But today I find a balance in all five.

-Do you have a favorite or one in which you stand out the most?

-Preferred, not really, because it is the set of everything. It’s one of the things I liked about penta. If I take away any discipline from him, he loses that grace. I usually compete in swimming and fencing tournaments and I sign up for street or track races to improve myself. But I was always passionate about doing all five. Lately I have been feeling very good in the combined test, which is pulling and running. It is one of the disciplines that took me the longest to get my hands on and this year in almost all the tournaments it was the one in which I stood out the most.

-You said that dedicating yourself to the pentathlon in Argentina is difficult and sacrificial. What pushes you to continue doing it?

-I love that it is a sport in which you never stop learning new things and there is always something to perfect. And your entire career will be like this, because there will always be things to learn. And although today I approach it with a lot of responsibility and seriousness, I still have fun in the same way I did in those first years, when it was still a game. I think I even enjoy it more.

Franco Serrano comes from two very positive years. In 2022 he reached the semi-finals (came 16th) in the Alexandria World Cupin Egypt, and won silver in the men’s relay, along with Emanuel Zapata y Vicente Limain it Resende South and Pan American Championships, Brazil, where he placed fifth in the individual. And in 2023 he achieved a seventh individual place in the Drzonkow World CupPoland, and that fifth place in Santiago 2023, which gave him the ticket to Paris 2024.

“Qualifying for the Games was my goal. I trained very hard, it was planned very well to achieve it. I left the Pan American Games very happy: it was one of the best experiences of my career,” he remembers. Although he clarifies: “I still had a slightly bitter taste for not having a medal, because what was planned, especially mentally, was become Pan American champion”.

The event in the French capital will not be the first Olympic Games for Serrano. He was baptized in the Youth of Buenos Aires 2018, where he won a silver for international mixed teams. Before starting her senior career, she was also the individual runner-up in the Cali 2021 Junior Pan American Games. But he knows Paris will be a different experience.

“Buenos Aires 2018 marked me a lot. It gave me the experience of knowing what it was like to compete in the Olympic Games and the entire classification and training process, which is similar to an adult Games. It was very important. I took Cali 2021 a little more seriously. I enjoyed it a lot, because it was a very nice sporting and social experience. Santiago 2023 surprised me: I felt that it was a more impressive event. Paris is going to be more than all those before“, he comments.

With his spot secured, Serrano will now focus on “training and enjoying the process.” And in planning with the same objective that went to Santiago.

“We still don’t think about any specific position, but we always aim to look for a medal: first place. In an Olympic Games, in the penta There are a lot of athletes who can win and I consider myself one of them“, he states.

And he adds: “I am aware that there is still a lot to grow and learn. This is a very old sport and I am only 23 years old. Most athletes explode of bigger ones. I had to qualify for the Pan American and Olympic Games at a young age, but that doesn’t mean anything. “I still have a lot to learn, to compete and to gain experience.”

Los Paris 2024 Olympic Games They will mark a break in the history of the pentathlon. They will be the last international event to include horse riding in the competition program.

After a controversial incident that occurred in Tokio 2020 – a German trainer was seen hitting a horse and was expelled and her team disqualified – and the need for the sport to modernize to adapt to the plan of the COIthe International Union decided to replace the show jumping test with an obstacle course, which will debut at the end of 2024. The change generated mixed feelings for Serrano.

“I would like him to continue horse riding, like the vast majority of athletes. I am still happy that the International Union has found a discipline to change to equestrian and that the pentathlon remains part of the Games. Some will like it more than others, but you have to accept it and continue,” says the man from Buenos Aires.

And he closes: “I am lucky that I am going to be in the Games and enjoy horse riding until the end. And then another challenge will come, because I am going to have a couple of months to adapt to the new discipline, which is not going to be easy, but not impossible either.