Combined events at the Tokyo World's

Once more, together with my Décapassion friends we made predictions for the World Championships Decathlon podium. And, once more, we could not predict what happened in the end, (although, to be fair, Pierre Gousset correctly predicted the victory of Neugebauer). Here is my prediction for the first four: 1) Garland, 2) Skotheim, 3) Neugebauer and 4) Owens-Delerme. And I had added that I did not think that LePage, Warner and Victor would play an important role. But let's start at the beginning.

Just before the first event Warner dropped out of the decathlon due to some injury sustained, supposedly, during the warm-up. Then the withdrawals started. Before the end of the first day Steinforth, Oiglane, Roosen, Ehammer and LePage had dropped out. For Ehammer and Roosen that was due to the fact they fouled out in the high jump missing the first height 1.93 and 1.81 m respectively, and in the case of Ehammer we are talking about an athlete with a 2.08 m personal best. Tilga also missed his initial height of 1.90 m but decided to continue and finish his decathlon (fouling out in the pole vault as well, and finally dropping out from the 1500 m). 

Garland had a very strong first day finishing with a total of 4707 points which is historically the third best performance, after those of O'Brien, 4743, and Eaton, 4728. Curiously, Neugebauer, who has a first-day personal best of 4685 points could do no better than 4455 at fourth place behind Skotheim and Owens-Delerme who had totaled 4543 and 4487 respectively. The things were going more or less along my predictions, and I was glad to notice that Owens-Delerme was back in shape, having shed this "heaviness" that I had noticed in some of his previous competitions appearances. 

Then the second day started and disaster struck. Skotheim had a bad race in the hurdles, an event where his personal best is an excellent 13.97 s. He hit the fifth hurdle, passed the sixth in total disequilibrium, stumbled and reaching the seventh he pushed it over with his hands. He completed the race in 15.77 s but was, as per the rules, disqualified. (I think that some day I will have to discuss the rule that forbids knocking down the hurdles but, for now, this has to wait). With Skotheim out, things started looking brighter for Owens-Delerme who had won the hurdles in 13.65 s. And the bad second day had just started for Garland. Discus is the best event for Neugebauer. Last year in the report on the Olympics I wrote that the discus was the event where Neugebauer lost the title. Well, this year that was where he won it. He threw a series of 54, 55 and 56 m, 8 metres ahead of Garland. 

And Owens-Delerme with 46 m showed that he had at last decided to work seriously on his discus throw. Pole vault did not change the order but Garland's 4.80 m allowed Neugebauer and Owens-Delerme who jumped 5.10 m, to close the gap to less than 100 points. Meanwhile Victor, who was sixth at that point, no-heighted at 4.50 m (well, he had only one unsuccessfull jump) and exited the decathlon. Kopecky also no-heighted at 4.70 m but he decided to pursue and, unlike Tilga, ran also the 1500 m (although not whole-heartedly). 

The javelin sealed the fate of Garland, when he threw 5 m behind his personal best while Neugebauer improved his by the same amount, with 59.78 and 64.34 m respectively. Owens-Delerme was practically at his personal best with 58.79 m and Kaul, once more, excelled with a 78.19 m throw. After the ninth event Neugebauer was already leading with 8072 points, with Garland second, 8057, Owens-Delerme third with 7958 and Kaul fourth with 7732 points. The last two being excellent 1500 m runners (excellent for decathletes, that is) one could expect some changes in the classification. The 1500 m was indeed a great race, run on a wet track. Garland was resigned to be demoted to bronze (Kaul was 300 points behind and not a real menace despite his 4:20) and jogged in 4:45. Owens-Delerme had a chance at winning the title. 

He ran the 1500 m like the good old days finishing in 4:17 but Neugebauer drew on his reserves and ran a huge personal best of 4:31, winning the title. In the end the order was Neugebauer 8804, Owens-Delerme 8784, Garland 8703, Kaul 8538. Twelve athletes scored over 8000 points, the ones below-par (not counting the ten who had dropped out or had fouled out in some event) were the area champions of South America and Asia, Ferreira and Fei. The former has a personal best of 8213 points and his presence in Tokyo was perfectly justified (and his 7927 point performance did not clash with the remaining ones). The one that stuck out like a sore thumb was that of the chinese decathlete's meager score of 7347 points. I find that the idea of qualifying the continental champion is a bad one. World Athletics should limit themselves to a wild card for the winner of the Continental Tour, who is, unavoidably a member of the elite.

While the men's decathlon was a gripping event, the women's heptathlon was somehow a let-down. We were expecting a duel between Thiam and Hall but it didn't materialise. (The regular readers of my blog know that I am an unconditional fan of Thiam and that I have a great esteem for Hall. Had the two been really in contention I would have trouble choosing my champion). Nafi Thiam coming from a difficult year with injuries and problems with the belgian federation was not the Thiam we have been admiring for years. And after participating in the first day of the heptathlon (half-heartedly?) she called it quits after the first event of the second day. Will she come back next year? Will she be back in great shape and as combative as ever? Those are questions to which nobody can answer at the time being. So let's go back to the World heptathlon and the new queen Anna Hall. 

In June I wrote an article after Hall's fantastic performance at the Götzis meeting, where she not only broke N. Debois' legendary 800 m heptathlon record but she also equalled C. Kluft's record of 7032 points. (I cannot resist the temptation to point out here that the record of Kluft and Hall is in fact the heptathlon world record. The records of J. Joyner-Kersee that culminated with the 7291 point performance were all obtained with the ancient javelin. However the women's javelin was first modified to one with a thicker rear part in 1991 and then, just as the one for men, with a 3 cm shift of the centre of mass towards the front from 1999. And while the javelin records obtained with implements with the ancient specifications were erased, World Athletics decided, for unfathomable reasons, to let JJK's records untouched. But for me the real world record stands at 7032 points). Going back to Hall, I must say that I was slightly disappointed by her performance in Tokyo. She was some 150 points behind her score in Götzis. But she was not the only one. The two other protagonists in Götzis, Dokter and Araujo, have also scored some 150 points fewer than in Götzis. T. Brooks did not compete in Götzis prefering the Décastar of Talence. And somehow she managed with 6581, to score 200  points more than in Talence (and even some 50 points more than in the US Trials). A great long jump performance of 6.79 m allowed her to share the bronze medal with K. Johnson-Thompson. 

The athlete who shined at Tokyo was K. O'Connor. I have seen her for the first time this winter when she finished second in the World Indoor pentathlon. She repeated this feat in the outdoor heptathlon in a competition where she improved her personal bests in five out of seven events. And I found out that she is an excellent javelin thrower, since with 53.09 m she managed to beat E. Oostewegel who is usually the winner of the heptathlon javelin. (By the way, Oosterwegel did not progress since her bronze medal in the Tokyo Olympics and her ninth place in Tokyo is the worst among her four participations in a world championship). Back to O'Connor. Trying to learn more about her, I found out that she has been competing since she was 13 with a 2:18.05 performance over 800 m and 5.13 m in the long jump. She discovered the heptathlon in 2017 and passed 6000 points in 2019. But her 6714 total in Tokyo places her among the elite of combined events (around the 30th performer of all time). It goes without saying that I will keep an eye open for her.

From the 24 qualified for the Tokyo heptathlon only 19 finished the event (A. Kälin did not even start, having injured herself during the long jump qualifications). Among them only 15 scored over 6000 points. The disappointment was the way-below-par performance of A. Lazraq-Khlass, who was silver medalist in last year's Europeans with 6635 points and who scored just 5758 points in Tokyo. A series of injuries have greatly perturbed her preparation. Let us hope that she will be ready for next year's Europeans.

The SPE15 site

I have never linked to this site. The main reason for this is that it is in french and that would oblige the majority of my readers to proceed through some translation tool. Also it's a site dedicated to doping questions and I hesitate to spend too much time on this subject. 

Concerning doping, SPE15 does not hesitate to call things by their proper name. On the home page one can read that in the US, doping is lightly punished. This is something I agree 100% with. The USADA (the US anti-doping agency) and her boss, the (in)famous Travis Tygart, are very keen to accuse WADA for turning a blind eye and covering-up doping scandals, while cleaning US stars from doping suspicions. A case in point is my article "The Knighton affair", where I wrote about how world medallist E. Knighton avoided USADA sanctions after having tested positive to anabolics. However the Athletics Integrity Unit, disagreeing with the USADA ruling, brought the case to CAS and the verdict of the latter was a four-year suspension of the athlete, meaning that he will be missing the 2028 Olympics. The american reactions to the CAS ruling were what one would expect. 

And Travis Tygart seized the occasion to attack WADA and talk about China. (At least he did not accuse Russia this time).

Another SPE15 article points out that there are many doping cases detected by the Athletics Integrity Unit while the International Testing Agency that provides anti-doping controls to 60 International federations (among which one finds Aquatics, Cycling, Triathlon but also the Underwater Sports to which belongs Finswimming) does not give an impression of utmost efficiency. 

But I did not decide to write this article motivated by doping arguments. As you may recall I recently wrote an article on the Balkan Games where I talked about other international competitions that saw the light after WWII. But I was intrigued by the various meetings, which evolved later, becoming part of the Diamond League and the Continental Tour. And, for obvious reasons, I tried to find how the Paris meeting was born. That's how I ended up (re)visiting the SPE15 site and reading the story behind the genesis of the Paris meeting in their special "retro" page. The page is mainly franco-centric but one can find some very interesting articles, like the one on 96 olympic champion V. Niyongabo. If you speak french and you are mildly interested by the doping questions, SPE15 is a site you should visit. 

The real 4x100 m mixed relay is here (at long last)

In an article I published eight years ago I was writing

"Speaking of mixed relays it's the 4x100 m that I would like to see even more than the 4x400 m. The short relay depends crucially on delicately balancing the speeds of the two runners at the exchange of the baton. So, adding the extra difficulty of different top speeds for male and female runners would make this event even more challenging. I cross my fingers for such an event to become part of official competitions".

Those words turned out to be prophetic. A few years later World Athletics introduced this event and it was first held during the 2025 World Athletics Relays in Guangzhou. 

And it was, for me, an utter disappointment. By that time WA had fixed the order of the 4x400 m mixed relay to man-woman-man-woman. But going to the World Relays they decided that the order for the 4x100 m would be woman-woman-man-man. 

I really hated this risk-avoiding configuration and I discussed the point with my Décapassion friends, Frédéric and Pierre Gousset. (On a totally different point, I am astonished that they did not write an article on the women's decathlon championship that was held in August. Unfortunately it's a bit too late by now). 

The Gousset argued that a man-woman-man-woman would be technically very difficult, but I was not convinced. The initial WA proposal had a single moderately-delicate exchange, woman to man, at the end of the opposite straight, really the most comfortable position for an exchange. What I would like to see was a technically challenging relay with man to woman exchanges. And World Athletics, for once, set aside their timorousness and decided to adopt the man-woman-man-woman order. During the World Athletics Council, held in Tokyo, just before the World Championships, it was decided, among others, that the new order will be applied in the World Athletics Series events as well as the World Athletics Relays that will be held next year in Gaborone, Botswana. Moreover the events will be part of the program of 2028, Los Angeles, Olympics. 

Now I am afraid that I will have to wait till May 2026, and the World Relays in Botswana for this event, disputed at high level. I just hope that in the months leading to Gaborone, there will be several national formations participating in the World Athletics Series, running the mixed 4x100 m, aiming at polishing their technique. I will definitely monitor the deployment of this event and report if necessary.

And, remember: "You have read it here first".