In what might be the weirdest Olympics tie-in since suggesting that Olympians eat McDonald’s, the US Pentathlon Team for the 2016 Rio Olympics has teamed up with The Expendables star Dolph Lundgren in, well, I simply can’t do it justice.
Screengrab via DromeBox Laboratories
What is this? Also, what is Pentathlon?
To answer the second question (the only one that can be truly answered, really), the Modern Pentathlon has athletes compete in five distinct trials: fencing, swimming, horse riding, running, and shooting. While based on a traditional competition from the Olympics in Greece, it was created by the founder of the modern Olympic Games to simulate the experience of a 19th-century cavalry soldier fighting his way through enemy lines.
In short, they’re basically Rambos.
This year’s team consists of US Army sergeant Nathan Schrimsher, who’s competing in the men’s individual final Saturday, and sisters Margaux and Isabella Isaksen, who’ve already finished.
You might recognise the Isaksen sisters as the ones running in fear from the hungry jowls of Rocky IV’s Drago in the fake Wheaties-style commercial. You can also check them out in a fake sequel to Lundgren’s 1994 thriller Pentathlon, appropriately called Pentathlon 2: Survival. In this unofficial sequel, the only remaining sport in a post-apocalyptic society is Pentathlon and “there are more than five ways to die.”
Given how completely badass Pentathletes are, it wouldn’t surprise me if their games would be the last thing to survive after the apocalypse.
Both videos were made by DromeBox Laboratories, a self-described “underground television network” based out of Los Angeles.
[YouTube]
Clarification: Added reference to original 1994 film Pentathlon.