The
decathlon is an
athletic event consisting of ten
track and field events. Events are held over
two consecutive days and the winners are determined by the combined
performance in all. Performance is judged on a points system in
each event, not by the position achieved. The decathlon is
contested mainly by male athletes, while female athletes contest
the
heptathlon.
Traditionally, the title of "World's Greatest Athlete" has been
given to the man who wins the decathlon. This began when King
Gustav V of Sweden told
Jim Thorpe, "You, sir, are the World's Greatest
Athlete" after Thorpe won the decathlon at the
Stockholm Olympics in 1912.
The
current holder of the title is American
Bryan Clay, the gold medal winner of the event at
the 2008 Beijing Olympics, who took
the title from Athens Olympics
champion Roman
Šebrle.
The word
decathlon is of Greek origin (from δέκα
deka [ten] and αθλος
athlos [contest]).
Events
The modern event is a set combination of athletic disciplines,
testing an individual's strength, speed, stamina, endurance, and
perseverance; it includes five events on each of two successive
days. The emphasis of the first day is on speed, explosive power,
and jumping ability; the second emphasizes technique and
endurance.
- Day 1
- Day 2
Origins
The event developed from the ancient
pentathlon. Pentathlon competitions were held at
the
ancient Greek Olympics. Pentathlons involved five
disciplines – long jump, discus throw, javelin, sprint and a
wrestling match. Introduced in Olympia during 708 BC, the game was
extremely popular for many centuries. By the sixth century BC,
pentathlons had become part of religious games.
Gorgos,
from Elis, a town near Olympia
, was a four-time pentathlon winner during the
period. Another key player was Lampis, a young
Spartan
who was the first Olympic winner. Automedes
was also a known player of the time. The last recorded game winner
was Publius Asklepiades of Corinth in AD 241.
Roman Emperor Theodosius I officially put an end to the game
in AD 393 by closing down all the sanctuaries including
Olympia.
From the mid 1700s various versions of the competition emerged. The
1948 Olympics endorsed a new
implication to the game . Seventeen-year-old
Bob Mathias emerged as the then decathlon
winner, banishing the myth that decathlon was a game for the old
and the experienced. Mathias still remains the youngest decathlon
sports champion in Olympic history.
Modern standardization
In 1964 the
International
Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF; now the International
Association of Athletics Federations) laid out new scoring tables
and brought about some standardization in the sport. The 1970s saw
the game spreading to the Eastern European nations, mainly the
Soviet Union, Poland and East Germany.
The
Amateur Athletic Union
held "all around events" from the 1880s.
One was
held at the 1904 Olympic Games.
The first
decathlon competition was held in just one single day, October 15,
1911, in Gothenburg
, Sweden
. This
was technically not the first decathlon, but one of the first two,
as Germany also held a decathlon on the very same day. The Germans
contested their events in the same order but with a different
scoring table to the one in Sweden. So, the first decathlon
world-record holder was the winner of the first completed meet.
Karl Hugo Wieslander, a Swede, and Karl Ritter von Halt, a German, were
announced world-record holders, although neither was ratified as a
world record; that would have to wait until 1922, when Aleksander Klumberg-Kolmpere of
Estonia
was declared the first official record-holder for a
performance in 1920.
The
decathlon was added to the 1912
Olympic Games in Stockholm
. After experience, the following order was
chosen: 100 m run, long jump, shot put, high jump, and 400 m run on
the first day; 110 m hurdles, discus, pole vault, javelin, and 1500
m run on the 2nd day. The Swedes also developed a set of scoring
tables, based on the 1908 Olympic records. After the 1912 Stockholm
Games, the tables were updated to include many new Olympic
records.
The 1912 Olympic decathlon has become legend because of the
presence of
Jim Thorpe. Thorpe had a
terrific 1912 spring track season, winning as many as six events
per meet. Thorpe made the U.S. Olympic team in four events:
decathlon, pentathlon, high jump, and long jump. The Russian czar
donated a Viking ship as a prize for the decathlon champion. Thorpe
won the decathlon by almost 700 points over his closest opponent,
Hugo Wieslander of Sweden. Because
of the unexpected large number of entries, the decathlon was held
over 3 days. The first day they held the 100 m run, long jump, and
shot put. The second day consisted of the high jump, 400 m run,
discus, and 110 m hurdles. The third and final day consisted of the
pole vault, javelin, and 1500 m run. Thorpe’s 8412 points converts
to 6564 points on the current tables, still a very respectable
score three quarters of a century later. Swedes Wieslander,
Charles Lomberg, and
Gösta Holmér captured the next three
spots.
Thorpe’s score was not beaten for another 15 years. In his absence,
there was little decathlon activity for the remainder of the
decade. Only in Sweden was the decathlon often contested. The
Swedes managed to stay neutral during World War I, which forced the
cancellation of the games of Berlin in 1916. Fascinatingly,
decathlons were held as part of the Far Eastern Games in 1913,
1915, 1917, and 1919.
The average good decathlete competes at most three or four times a
year, the less talented even fewer.
Bill
Toomey’s nine great efforts back in 1969 were very unusual. The
decathlon is the Olympic event least commonly seen in non-Olympic
meets.
The decathlete does not have to be amazing in all events to be a
champion in the sport itself. But he must range from adequate in
his weak events to good or better in the other skills. Because he
must do well in the four runs and six field events, he has little
opportunity to perfect any one event. A decathlete trying to
improve performance in one specific event is likely to deteriorate
in another, because the physical demands of the various events are
conflicting. His training is necessarily different as he strives to
improve all techniques, gain strength without losing speed, and
acquire the stamina to perform through a competition that lasts
anywhere from 4 to 12 hours per day during the Olympics. As a
reference point, a performance in the (non-decathlon) world record
class would give somewhere between 1100 and 1400 points per event,
totaling over 12500 points for a full record-breaking decathlon.
When compared to the 6-7000 points that a good decathlete would
usually get, or the world record of slightly over 9000 points, this
illustrates how much specialization must be sacrificed to become a
good all-round athlete.
The decathlon is one of the few events with an arbitrary
scoring system and thus the only
one in which personal performance and records can be broken as new
scoring tables are adopted. Under the original scoring tables
adopted in 1912,
Akilles
Järvinen of Finland finished second in both the 1928 and 1932
Olympics, but the new scoring system introduced in 1934 gave
Jarvinen higher converted totals than both the men he lost to.
World-record holder
C.K. Yang lost 1032 points when his 1963
performance was converted late in 1964 to the new tables first used
in the 1964 Olympics. His top rivals lost only 287 and 172 points
when their bests were converted, and Yang dropped from the favorite
to third on the pre-Games ranking, finishing a disappointing
fifth.
The arbitrary nature of the
scoring tables can work in the
opposite direction as well. In 1984, at the
Los Angeles Olympic Games, Great
Britain’s
Daley Thompson missed the
world record by one point on then-used 1962/77 tables. The tables
were changed a year later and Thompson’s score in Los Angeles
converted to a best-ever mark.
Traditionally, all decathletes who finished the event do a round of
honour together after the competition.
Points system
The 2001 IAAF points tables use the following formulae:
- Points = INT(A*(B-P)C) for track events
- Points = INT(A*(P-B)C) for field events
A, B and C are parameters that vary by discipline, as shown in the
table below, while P is the performance by the athlete, measured in
seconds (running), metres (throwing), or centimetres
(jumping).
| Event |
A |
B |
C |
| 100 m |
25.4347 |
18 |
1.81 |
| Long Jump |
0.14354 |
220 |
1.4 |
| Shot Put |
51.39 |
1.5 |
1.05 |
| High Jump |
0.8465 |
75 |
1.42 |
| 400 m |
1.53775 |
82 |
1.81 |
| 110 m Hurdles |
5.74352 |
28.5 |
1.92 |
| Discus Throw |
12.91 |
4 |
1.1 |
| Pole Vault |
0.2797 |
100 |
1.35 |
| Javelin Throw |
10.14 |
7 |
1.08 |
| 1500 m |
0.03768 |
480 |
1.85 |
The decathlon tables should not be confused with the scoring tables
compiled by Bojidar Spiriev, to allow comparison of the relative
quality of performances by athletes in different events. On those
tables, for example, a decathlon score of 9006 points equates to
1265 "comparison points", the same number as a triple jump of 18.00
m.
Benchmarks
Split evenly between the events, the following table shows the
benchmark levels needed to earn 1000, 900, 800, and 700 points in
each sport.
| Event |
1000 pts |
900 pts |
800 pts |
700 pts |
Units |
| 100m |
10.395 |
10.827 |
11.278 |
11.756 |
Seconds |
| Long Jump |
7.76 |
7.36 |
6.94.1 |
6.51 |
Meters |
| Shot Put |
18.4 |
16.79 |
15.16 |
13.53 |
Meters |
| High Jump |
2.20 |
2.10 |
1.99 |
1.88 |
Meters |
| 400m |
46.17 |
48.19 |
50.32 |
52.58 |
Seconds |
| 110m Hurdles |
13.8 |
14.59 |
15.419 |
16.29 |
Seconds |
| Discus Throw |
56.17 |
51.4 |
46.59 |
41.72 |
Meters |
| Pole Vault |
5.28 |
4.96 |
4.63 |
4.29 |
Meters |
| Javelin Throw |
77.19 |
70.67 |
64.09 |
57.45 |
Meters |
| 1500m |
233.79 |
247.42 |
261.77 |
276.96 |
Seconds |
The total decathlon score for all
world records in the respective
events would be 12,545. The total decathlon score for all the best
performances achieved during decathlons is 10,485.
Women's decathlon
At major championships, the women's equivalent of the decathlon is
the seven-event
heptathlon; prior to 1980
it was the five-event
pentathlon.
However,
in 2001 the IAAF approved scoring tables for
women's decathlon; the current world record holder is Austra Skujytė of Lithuania
. Women's disciplines differ from men's in
the same way as for standalone events: the shot, discus and javelin
weigh less, and the sprint hurdles uses lower hurdles over 100 m
rather than 110 m. The points tables used are the same as for the
heptathlon in the shared events. The schedule of events differs
from the men's decathlon, with the field events switched between
day one and day two; this is to avoid scheduling conflicts when
men's and women's decathlon competitions take place
simultaneously.
One hour decathlon
One hour decathlon is a special type of decathlon, in which the
athletes have to start the last of ten events (1500 m) within sixty
minutes after the start of the first event.
The world record
holder is a Czech
decathlete
Robert Změlík, who achieved
7897 points at a meeting in Ostrava
, Czechoslovakia
in 1992.
World records
The first
world record
in the
men's decathlon was recognized by the
International
Association of Athletics Federations in 1922.
As of June 21, 2009, 35 world records have been ratified by the
IAAF in the event. The first score in the following table indicates
the score using the tables in use at the time, the second score is
based on tables currently in use.
The first
world record
in the
women's decathlon was recognized by the
International
Association of Athletics Federations in 2004.
As of June 21, 2009, 2 world records have been ratified by the IAAF
in the event.
NOTE: Skujyte's marks total 6333 using the men's scoring
tables
National records
Season's best
See also
Other multiple event contests
References
External links
Top topics
Wikis
Quiz
Facts
Map
Search
