Joey Payeur
A nondescript chat between two coaches from two different sports in a different country paved the way to success in a new sport for Donovan Taylor.
The Fort Frances native earned the bronze medal in the four-person Junior Men category, and fourth place in the five-entrant Senior Men division, with a total of 996 points at the 2015 Modern Pentathlon Canadian Championships earlier this month in southern Ontario.
“Donovan’s former coach at Indiana University, Donny Brush, is friends with the coach of the U.S. pentathlon team,” Taylor’s mom, Dawnn, said about how her son came to get involved in the event that includes swimming, horse jumping, fencing, and a combined running-shooting segment.
“The pentathlon coach was talking to Donny and asking him if he knew anyone who was a fast swimmer but also had horse riding experience,” she noted.
“In the pentathlon world, swimming and riding are the two toughest things to learn,” she stressed.
“The others can be taught.”
Brush immediately recommended the 21-year-old Taylor, whose family has owned horses and competed in many horse shows over the years.
He was invited to go to the U.S. Olympic pentathlon team training centre in Colorado Springs, Colo. back in the spring to hone his skills in the various disciplines.
“Because he is a dual citizen, he has the choice of competing in either the Canadian or U.S. nationals and he thought with more people at the U.S. event, it would be a little easier to get a better result as a newcomer to the sport at the Canadians,” explained Dawnn Taylor, who also is head coach of the Fort Frances Aquanauts.
Donovan Taylor started by finishing fifth out of five in fencing (four juniors also competed as seniors, along with a fifth participant who was only in the seniors’ division).
“He had never done it before two months ago when he was first introduced to it [fencing],” Dawnn Taylor lauded about her son posting a 6-13 record in his 19 rapid-fire matches (first hit wins) to earn 187 points.
“He only had three training sessions before he went, so for him to win [just under] 33 percent of his matches was great, according to his coach at the training centre.”
Taylor then moved on to his forte of swimming, where he dominated the 200m freestyle segment in a time of 1:59.09 (343 points).
“He was confident going in but still had some trepidation not knowing what everyone else was going to swim,” noted Dawnn Taylor, who saw her son rise to third in the standings after his performance in the pool.
Taylor then exchanged his swim trunks for riding clothes as he finished tied for second in the show-jumping component with 14 faults (two missed jumps out of 15).
“It was nearly 100 degrees [Fahrenheit] outside and here’s Donovan on a black draft horse cross, which is not going to fare well in that kind of heat,” said Dawnn Taylor.
“It didn’t help the Masters class jumped first and the woman that had the horse Donovan was going to ride loped [galloped] the horse for 20 minutes before she competed.
“We had to wait 30 minutes after she was done just to get the horse’s heart rate down.”
Still, Taylor’s 286 points moved him up to second place entering the run-shoot event, where his difficulties with travelling the four 800m portions sprinkled evenly between the four shooting segments caught up to him.
His run time of 18:40 over the 3,200 metres was the slowest in the field.
While the other competitors scoring 365 points or higher, Taylor’s effort yielded only 180 points to drop him back to third spot.
“The ground is not a swimmer’s favourite friend,” Dawnn Taylor said half-jokingly.
Taylor, who will enter his sophomore year this fall at South Dakota State University in Brookings, plans to keep going with his pentathlon journey.
He’ll be fencing in Sioux Falls, S.D. during the school year and also working with the SDSU equestrian team.
That’s to go along with him competing for the SDSU Jackrabbits’ swim team, specializing in the 200m butterfly and 400m I.M.
