Thiam is back

The last heptathlon Nafi Thiam had completed was the one that earned her a third successive title at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Then came 2025, when Thiam was obviously not in top shape and dropped out after the fifth event in the Worlds. She did participate in the Ratingen Meerkampf meeting in June this year, but it was clear from the outset that she would not contest the full event, only selected disciplines. (If you consult the Ratingen results on the World Athletics website, you will see “NM” next to Thiam’s long jump, which might appear to indicate that she fouled in the event. However, when you track down the official results from Ratingen, Thiam is correctly listed as DNS – i.e. as not having started).

So everyone was looking forward to Thiam’s first heptathlon appearance in almost a year. (And I suspect the person most anxiously awaiting this moment was Thiam herself). And she did not disappoint. Her performances were reasonably good, although I find her jumps somewhat below par. Here are the details:

100 m hurdles: 13.73 s

High jump: 1.85 m

Shot put: 15.10 m

200 m: 24.92 s

Long jump: 6.05 m

Javelin throw: 51.51 m

800 m: 2:13.66

for a total of 6482 points – the sixth-best performance this year. It is clear that simply by improving her jumps she could add more than 200 points to her score, bringing it to around 6,700 points. Only three women have scored above 6700 points this year: A. Kälin with 6813 (though she was almost 200 points behind that mark at the Europeans, finishing fourth), K. O’Connor with 6751, and E. Oosterwegel with 6713. And let’s not forget S. Dokter, who scored 6664 points for bronze at the Europeans. So even with a potential 6700-point score, Thiam would still be rather vulnerable. And things may be worse if A. Hall, who took a year off to recover and build towards the 2027 Beijing World Championships and the 2028 Olympics, returns in strong form.

I guess Thiam’s plan is more or less the same, perhaps with a focus solely on the 2028 Olympics and one or two low-key competitions in 2027 instead of the World Championships. Will she be able to win a fourth gold in Los Angeles? I am afraid that is a very tall order. But even if she manages to win a medal of any colour, that would be something no woman has done before. (Another great female athlete, A. Włodarczyk, also has three golds like Thiam, but “only” two fourth places – in her first and, for now, last participation). Thiam is a great athlete  (the best in the post-doping-control era) so I will keep my fingers crossed and follow her activities closely over the next two years.

PS. In case you are interested in combined events (and I assume that if you are reading this post and you are not a robot scraping it, you should be interested), you should visit my friends F. and P. Gousset’s Décapassion page. They have excellent videos from the Talence Décastar. And while you are there, bookmark their page and visit it regularly. It is the best page on combined events – and one of the, alas very few, promoting the women’s decathlon.