BEIJING -- Coaches gush about their athletes all the time, but Janusz Peciak seems genuinely floored by the fact that three of his four U.S. modern pentathletes are in the Olympics after only about three years of training.

He must have mentioned that, oh, roughly 127 times yesterday during a news conference, a day after the two-man, two-woman team returned from about a week of training in Singapore after being here for the Aug. 8 opening ceremony.

One of the newbies is Sam Sacksen, 22, of Somerset. Another is even younger, Margaux Isaksen, 16. Sheila Taormina is 39, but this is her third Olympics after she competed in swimming and the triathlon.

The only relative veteran is Eli Bremer, 30, who is out of the Air Force and finished 12^th in the 2008 world championships.

The men's event is Thursday, the women's is Friday.

Sacksen is a little tired of hearing about age and experience levels.

"It's the same group of people we've been competing against," he said of the World Cup circuit.

Isaksen is more inclined to overlook the youth angle.

"As far as my age, sometimes I forget just because I'm competing with older athletes," she said. "Age doesn't come into play."

Besides, Peciak agrees that, in the modern pentathlon, it's about consistency as much as anything. Top-10 finishes in each event can add up to a medal.

"There's balance, but you cannot be bad," said Peciak, who won the gold medal for Poland in the 1976 Games at Montreal. "You don't have to be great, but you have to be good in all five events. In Montreal, I didn't win any events."

One reason the modern pentathlon doesn't favor someone strong in a certain event or two is the divergent nature of the five sports. The athletes compete in 10-meter air-pistol shooting, epee fencing, 200-meter freestyle swimming, equestrian show-jumping and a 3-kilometer run.

In addition, the competitors are randomly paired with a horse from a stable of them for the equestrian event.

"For pure unpredictability, I'd have to choose the ride simply because you're drawing a strange horse that we've never seen before," Sacksen said. "It's the one you have the least control over. Fencing would probably be second because it depends on the day you're having -- it could go up or down -- but riding would be the primary one."

U.S. modern pentathlon riding coach Michael Cintas said judging from the wide range of equine personalities they saw on the World Cup circuit, athletes could get anything from "a rogue, a nice guy, congenial, strong, fast, bucking," and it's up to the rider to have the, uh, horse sense to deal with it.

"I say 10 percent is luck. I say 90 percent is skill," Cintas said. "It's a sixth sense, it's sensitivity, it's absolute communication with the animal."

There's a skill you don't hear about at the Olympics every day. At the equestrian events, riders and horses work as a team. And they don't have four other sports to tackle in the same day.

Sacksen, who lived on a cattle ranch in Arizona until he was 8 and rode horses and later ran cross country at Rockwood Area High School, has an unconventional background for the modern pentathlon.

Many are world-class fencers -- by far Sacksen's weakest event -- and most Americans get into the sport after getting a start in swimming.

"It's very unusual because we always try to recruit from swimming," Peciak said. "But Sam improved in swimming a lot over the past few years. When he came, he swam about 2:20. Now I think he's about 2:05. That's a very good improvement. And running, too. When he came, he was about 10 minutes. Now it's about nine minutes."

Sacksen took to shooting remarkably well, but said he was struggling some with it in Singapore -- something Peciak attributed to overthinking.

The first two events, shooting and fencing, usually set the tone.

"I think we're going to see a big shakeup at the Olympics in shooting and fencing, relative to what people have been doing all year," Bremer said. "Looking back, you tend to see a couple of the top guys just blow it in their first couple events."

That could open the door for the less experienced Americans.

"Of course, we have a chance for medals, but we are inexperienced," Peciak said.

"Everything depends on the first two events, how they will shoot and fence. If they do OK, they will have a chance to win because they are all good in the running and swimming."