Finding the World’s Greatest Athlete, Decathlon

Decathlon, as the name implies, is an athletic event consisting of ten distinct track and field events. The first day consists of a 100m race, a long jump, a shot put, a high jump and a 400m race.  For the second day, athletes participate in the 110 Hurdles, Discus throw, pole vault, javelin and 1,500 m race. The winner is determined by the combined performance in all 10 events. Decathlon’s scoring table is on 1,500 point scale.  In the past, 1,500 point is regarded as man’s limitation but that was broken and changed recently.

Roman Sebrle from Czech

In 2001 Sebrle became the first decathlete ever to achieve over 9,000 points setting the world record at 9,026 points. In general, the winner’s score for the Olympics and World Championships were around 8,500 since 1970.  So, you can really understand how great Sebrle’s score was. 

Dan O’Brien from USA

There are still other great athletes even though they didn't pass the 9,000 point mark. Dan O’Brien was deemed one of the best decathlon athletes winning an Olympic gold medal after winning three consecutive world titles from 1991 to 1995 World Championships. Tomas Dvorac won gold medals at the 1997, 1999 and 2001 World Championships.

Tomas Dvorac from Czech

These athletes are great not simply because they won three consecutive gold medals.

It is most important to maintain the body’s overall balance during the 4 track events and 6 field events in the decathlon. Athletes can not focus on training for a specific event because that breaks the balance and harmony of the body. So, two athletes mentioned above maintained a strong harmony in their body for six whole years. It is hard to imagine how much they trained. That’s the reason we can call decathlon athletes the world’s greatest.

Kun-Woo Kim from Korea

He set the current record for Koreans of 7,824 point in 2006.

The decathlon event of Championships 2011 will begin on Sat, the 27^th of August at 10AM.