It is always good to hear from old friends when you are hospitalisedfor a few days so, while recovering from a recent op - nothing too serious thankfully - it was especially heartening to receive a call from someone who arguably remains Britain's outstanding all-round sports personality.

Anyone under 40 may not have heard of Jim Fox but back in the swinging Seventies he led the charge down sport's superhighway,a swashbuckling, Corinthian hero in an age when sportsmen were men, and women seemed happy to be ladies.

And Foxy was a ladies' man, the ruggedly handsome, 6ft 3in dashing white sergeant, single, and single-minded who, on his own admission was a bit of a stud; swordsman supreme, in every sense.

To hear his voice again was a warming reminder of a gentler, moreromantic era before the pursuit of sporting glory became suffused by greed, drugs and duplicity.

Foxy competed in four Olympics, winning a gold medal with the British modern pentathlon team in the Montreal Games 35 years ago, a bronze in the World Championships in Mexico and was 10 time snational champion.

A fencing master who literally foiled the Soviet cheat Boris Onischenkoin Montreal, he was also a prolific cross-country runner, swimmer, marksman and horseman.

Lately, there have been some disturbing rumours about his state of health. For Fox is a victim of Parkinsons, the wretched affliction which attacks muscles and mobility - the same crippling disease that affectshis famous namesake, the actor Michael J Fox and his even more illustrious sporting contemporary from the Seventies, Muhammad Ali.

During a visit a couple of weeks ago to modern pentathlon's headquarters at Bath University I was told that Fox was believed to be far from well. So it was good to hear from the horseman's mouth, so to speak, that in fact that Jeremy (Jim) Fox, OBE, is not only aliveand kicking at 69 but looking forward to being at Greenwich Park when mod pen's Olympic honours are fought for next year.

His is indeed a tough battle but it is one he does not shy away from. There is no skirting delicately around the subject. He always tells people, up front, what's wrong with him. "I don't want them to think I'm pissed," he laughs.

Parkinson's is a degenerative lesion of the brain which affects not only movement and appearance but also the psyche. Many patients become depressed not only because previous activities are beyond them but also because the actual disease process can affect mood.

The hands that once relied now on absolute steadiness for impeccable aim on the range now shake almost uncontrollably but unlike Ali, Fox's speech has not become slurred, although he does suffer tremors and increasing rigidity with a withering of the lower part of his body. But again, unlike Ali, he has not been reduced to a ponderous shuffle. Rather, he paces himself at a brisk trot, leaning forward to assist his balance.

He was diagnosed 14 years ago when he kept stumbling and losing his balance. He believes it may have been caused by a fall from a horse, but he isn't sure. There is no known cause, no known cure. An array of specialists have offered different prognoses, different advice and although he now faces his future with fortitude, it wasn't always like that.

I remember him telling me about the onset of the disease. "I couldn't wash myself or raise my arms above my head. My missus even had to roll me out of bed. You begin to wonder what happens when you get incontinent and start to think about other possibilities. Is it time tocall it a day? You know, Euthanasia, even suicide. You get fed up and wonder why you've been fingered when you've never smoked or done drugs and drank only in moderation. Then you slap yourself for being a morbid old fool and realise what a lucky sod you are to have had such a cracking life and start believing that there's a lot more to come."

In Fox's case the fact that he spurned self-pity for a vigorous, reborn self-belief was spurred by the positive effect of new medication andthe dedication of his family.

A soldier from boyhood, Fox (pictured) was made up to captain a year afterhis Olympic triumph. He quit the Army in 1983 and with his lump-sum pension got stuck into property buying, renovating and sellingat a profit. For some years he was an active chairman of the Modern Pentathlon Association, operating from his splendid home in Pewsey,Wiltshire, where bob skeleton silver medalist Shelley Rudman is a neighbour.

After his many conquests he settled into happily married life and has three effervescent, athletic daughters. His wife, Aly, is a high- flying accountant and much involved in the equestrian world.

In a sporting world so disfigured by excess, Fox knows the modern pentathlon is something of an anachronism.

The Greeks usually had a word for it, but one of their early sports fans, old Aristotle, apparently had several. "The most beautiful sportsmenof all," he opined of the pentathletes when the original Olympics took off in ancient Athens, his philosophy endorsed by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who adapted the event for the modern Games "because it produces the ideal, complete athlete, testing a man's moral qualities as well as his physical resources and skills."

In a sporting world disfigured by excess, "mod pen" is still regarded bysome as an anachronism, yet it remains the most authentic of Olympic pursuits, symbolic of what De Coubertin - and Aristotle - thought the Games should be about, though it is no longer merely men who make it a thing of sporting beauty.

Modern pentathlon, embracing five sports - running, swimming, fencing, shooting and riding - has long been an understated activity in Britain, but it is an efficiently run and successful one. The most demanding of all disciplines, and the hardest to train for, especially as it used to be spread over five days but is now compressed into a one-day dawn-to-dusk affair, mainly to make it more televisual.

Britain has an outstanding track record, based on the team gold medal brought home from Montreal by Fox and his men in 1976, and subsequently the World Championship won by Richard Phelps in 1993. Fox was the mod pen pioneer but latterly the new Foxes largely have been vixens.

In the past decade it has been British women who have taken overfrom the men, with Steph Cook's stunning Olympic gold in Sydney 2000, where Kate Allenby won bronze, Georgina Harland's third place in Athens and Heather Fell's silver in Beijing, as well as some notable team triumphs in global competition.

Now, down in Bath, one of the nation's top notch sports hubs, these throughly modern pentathletes, latter-day Lara Crofts, seven ofthem in the world top 40, are preparing for a serious assault on London 2012 under performance director Jan Bartu, who competed for Czechoslovakia against Fox in 1976 and in his 12 years here is up there with cycling's Dave Brailsford, rowing's Jurgen Grobler and boxing's Terry Edwards as one of the most consistently successful GB coaches.

And among "Jan's Angels" there is a new girl on top – Freyja Prentice (pictured) ,a 20-year-old slim blonde from Aberdeen, who, at number 11 in the world, has nudged ahead of Fell and with other team-mates Samantha Murray, Katy Burke, Mhairi Spence, Louise Helyer and Katy Livingstone, typifying a sporting blend of beauty and the beef.

Fit and feisty, all could be candidates for the catwalk rather than the podium. Prentice, a world junior silver and senior and junior team gold medalist, was born in Stavanger, Norway - where her father, originally from South Africa, was working as an oil rig drilling supervisor. She was named Freyja after a Norwegian goddess, which also happensto be a brand of chocolate which her New Zealand-born mother, a former racehorse trainer, was particularly fond.

Now in the second year of a biology degree at the university, she says: "The standard among the girls is amazing. We are all friends because there is a team element as well but we all want to beat each other, so even our training sessions are like a competition."

Only two from each of the women and men's teams can compete in London so this is a vital year for gaining qualification points, starting with the first of World Cup series in Palm Springs, USA, next month,with the final in London on 9-10 July. The World Championships follow later that month in at Medway, Kent. Bartu describes Prentice as "almost the ideal individual for the sport inbecause of her all-round athletic ability. What she needs now is more experience to raise her game .She needs to compete as much as as possible."

The mod pen remains the ultimate Olympic test, and with the new biathlon-style combined running and shooting is even harder graft. But with Prentice no longer the apprentice, and the men's squad, led by European silver medalist Sam Weale re-gaining some ground lost to the women, Britain can be optimistic for 2012."We have athletes in both groups who can go all the way," says Bartu.

Never mind Aristotle, even Homer would nod in agreement. Foxy too.

Which is why when they present the Olympic mod pen medals next year the old soldier is determined to be there on parade with his own, and the sport should salute him.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.