The decathlon is a 10-event, standard men’s track and
field event contested over two days. The 100-meter
dash, long jump, shot put, high jump, and 400-meter
dash are held on the first day. The 110-meter hurdles,
discus throw, pole vault, javelin throw, and 1,500-meter
run make up the second day’s schedule. A scoring table
awards points for individual performances and the athlete with the highest score after ten events is the winner.
The women’s counterpart is the seven-event heptathlon.
History
The modern decathlon has an ancient Greek heritage
and was added to the modern Olympic program in
1912. Native American Jim Thorpe of the Carlisle Indian School won the initial Olympic title but was subsequently stripped of the honor.
The term decathlon comes from the Greek—deka
for “ten” and athlos for “contest.“At the turn of the century, Scandinavian nations (Sweden, Denmark, Finland) experimented with multievent competition. The
Danes called theirs a “decathlon” and offered a national
decathlon championship as early as 1900.
Various multi-event contests were held early in the
century, but it was the Swedes who proposed a pair of
such contests for men, a pentathlon (substituting the
1,500-meter run for wrestling) and a decathlon. In
Stockholm in 1912, Sauk Indian Jim Thorpe (1888–
1953) gave the event mythology and lore when he won
the pentathlon and decathlon by huge margins. During
the awards ceremony Sweden’s King Gustav declared
him the “world’s greatest athlete”—the title accorded
Olympic decathlon champions and world-record holders ever since. (In 1913, as a scapegoat for amateur AAU
rules,Thorpe lost the medals after he played a few games
of minor league baseball while on summer break. They
were restored in 1982, almost 30 years after his death.)
The first official multi-event scoring tables, using
1908 Olympic records as a basis, were provided in the spring of 1912 by the Swedes. Since 1912, world decathlon records have been set on the different tables on
37 occasions, 8 of them at Olympic Games.
Rules and Play
Decathlon events have retained their order since the first
contest in 1911, except for the 1912 Olympics. The decathlon itself is a specialty whose constituent athletes are
fascinated by versatility; decathletes prefer doing well at
10 sports rather than superbly at 1. They are the Renaissance men of sport. The event requires ample training.
Few decathletes, for example, ever trained harder than
Bruce Jenner, who was known to devote seven hours per
day to workouts. Training routines must attempt to enhance speed, strength, agility, and endurance.
Decathlon world records have been held by someone from each major race (white, African American,
American Indian, and Asian). Nevertheless, acceptance
and success in the decathlon has been largely confined
to North America and Europe, leading some to conclude that the Olympic decathlon is an Europe versus
North America contest.
No decathlete can rely on a few competent individual performances to win. The scoring tables reward
balance and consistency, and no contest is won with a
single great mark. Yet a decathlon is easily lost with a
single weak event. This forces the decathlete into a
physical cost/benefit analysis. The athlete must decide,
for example, whether to put more emphasis on the shot
put at the expense of running training.
Mental factors play a bigger role in the decathlon
than they do in other events. The main challenge is
maintaining concentration and focus throughout the ten
events. Frantic struggles against antagonistic opponents
are rare; contestants compete against themselves and the
scoring table. The adversaries are time, distance, fatigue,
and the fear of failure.Other competitors are fellow competitors, helpful motivators, and often good friends.
Today the decathlon is truly popular only in Germany. In 1995 approximately 1,100 U.S. athletes and
5,000 worldwide participated in at least two decathlons
per year. The Soviet Union systematically promoted the
event before 1991 but the change in economic/political
systems has relegated it to a “developing” world decathlon power. The United States has recently regained
the world decathlon lead, mostly as a result of corporate endorsements.
—FRANK ZARNOWSKI
Bibliography: Kamper, Eric, and Bill Mallon. (1992) The
Golden Book of the Olympic Games. Milan: Vallardi and Asociates. Wallechinsky, David. (1984, 1988, 1992) The
Complete Book of the Olympics. New York: Viking; Boston:
Little, Brown. Zarnowski, Frank. (1996) Olympic Glory
Denied. Glendale, CA: Griffin Publishing.