Frank Zarnowski is the Number One world specialist of combined events. He is the author of several books on the matter, some of which have been mentioned in this blog. The very first "technical" post in the blog was about ancient pentathlon, a post largely inspired by Zarnowski's monograph and which led to a first exchange of correspondence with him. His book "All-Around Men" was at the origin of my post on how the decathlon got its events. Although I have read Zarnowski's book "Olympic Glory denied" I haven't used it for any post of mine. And of course one should not forget the absolute classic "The Decathlon" with the photo of the great Jim Thorpe on its cover. F. Zarnowski maintains a blog on combined events for many years now where he is publishing his Deca newsletter. Although the existence of this blog was not unknown to me, it had somehow slipped below the horizon. It was brought again to my attention by the recently organised women's decathlon: one link led to another and I ended up in the Deca blog.
Reading the blog I was perusing the US 2019 results (up to July 11) and discovered a mention of a 30-minute decathlon. The regular readers of my blog may remember the post on "decathlon variants" where I presented a newspaper clipping talking about 30-minute decathlons. The event was introduced in 1971 by D. Thoreson who passed away this last November.
The Santa Barbara Track Club decided to honour his memory by organising a 30 minute decathlon. I wrote to F. Zarnowski asking him whether the 30-min decathlon was regularly contested and whether statistics did exist. It turned out that this was not the case. Here is his answer.
No, the 30 min dec is rather infrequent and I am not aware of any meets in years. The recent meet in SB was a tribute to Dave Thoreson who "invented" this 10 event version.
The Santa Barbara competition got me thinking about how one approaches such an "impossible" event like the 30 minutes decathlon. Well, first there are the rules set by the organisers. The competitors begin on their own in the 100 meters, three minutes apart from each other. At their individual 30 minute mark the athlete’s 1500m time will begin at 30:00, regardless if the athlete is present. Each Decathlete will have a "Dec-Caddy" to support them during the event, keeping track of gear, transition times and more.
Nothing is written about the number of attempts allowed in vertical jumps. They are limited to 6 in the one-hour decathlon so one can surmise that the limit in this event is just 3. In any case given the time constraints I do not think that anybody would be attempting more than two jumps especially in pole vault. For me the best strategy is to start one "safe" jump. Let's say your are a regular 5+ m vaulter. Start with a 4 m jump. This already ensures 700 points. If you can spare the time for a second one you can decide between a 5 m jump (and 300 more points) or something around 4.50 m (for just 150 more points). But the essential thing is to make sure you get those 700 points for a jump at what would have been under regular conditions, a warm-up one. As for the rest, never go for a second attempt unless you have fouled the first one or it was really very, very bad. Finally it is clear that you must sacrifice either the 400 m or the 100 m hurdles. Given the time constraints you cannot go all-out in both (and the same is true for the one-hour decathlon but there at least you can rest for a few minutes between these two events).
Curtis Beach won this event with a total of 6242 points. His performances were: 11.54, 6.70, 11.78, 1.85, 53.26, 16.96, 32.07, 3.65, 40.39, 4:34.09. I have written about Beach in a previous post of mine, since he holds the indoor-heptathlon world record for 1000 m (and the 2nd best decathlon 1500 m). He is a 8000+ decathlete but if one wishes to do comparisons it is better to look at his 2019 best decathlon performance of 7684 points. Compared to this the 6242 points of Beach are slightly above 80 %, a most impressive percentage. (R. Zmelik's one-hour WR is at 90 % of his two-day personal best).
For me the 6242 points of Beach are the world record for the 30-min decathlon. The ones previously recorded were obtained with manual timing and the old-specifications javelin.
(By the way, why on earth does the IAAF consider J. Joyner-Kersee's 1988 score of 7291 points as the world record? The new specifications for women's javelin were introduced in 1999 and thus, to my eyes, the world record should be C. Klüft's, 2007, performance of 7032 points. Perhaps they think that erasing JJK's record would have been a lese-majesty decision).
If you are interested in the detailed results of the 30-min decathlon you can find them at this link. There was one feminine presence among the athletes who competed for the 30-min decathlon: ex-US heptathlon champion S. Day-Monroe. (She holds the US record for indoor pentathlon with 4805 points). She started practicing pole vault less than a month before the Santa Barbara event but unfortunately she no-heigthed during the decathlon. Here are her performances: 13.49, 5.07, 14.49, 1.60, 1:18.0, 17.42, 29.97, X, 41.30, 7:11.74 for a total of 4860 points. Nothing exceptional but one must take into account that Day-Monroe is not training for heptathlon for two years now. Should she decide to train for the 10 events and if there is another 30-min decathlon next year (a big "if") she could even surpass Beach's mark (but, of course, we are talking about points obtained from the women's tables).
Since I was sending a mail to F. Zarnowski, I decided to ask him about the women's decathlon. I was hoping to obtain a technical answer on the difficulties of this event but, unfortunately, his answer did not allow much hope. Here is what he wrote:
I have no strong feeling on the women's decathlon. There is so little interest from the rest of the world that I'd be surprised if it gained in popularity and replaced the current women's combined event.
(The "rest of the world" is a reference to the fact that a women's decathlon was recently organised in the US). Unfortunately if F. Zarnowski, who is Mr. Decathlon, is pessimistic about decathlon becoming the official women's combined event, I do not see how we can expect a major change in the years to come. The only hope is that the initiative of the Women's Decathlon Association does not die out and gets to create emulators in other parts of the world.
A very nice photo of F. Zarnowski
David Thoreson in the 60s
The Santa Barbara Track Club decided to honour his memory by organising a 30 minute decathlon. I wrote to F. Zarnowski asking him whether the 30-min decathlon was regularly contested and whether statistics did exist. It turned out that this was not the case. Here is his answer.
No, the 30 min dec is rather infrequent and I am not aware of any meets in years. The recent meet in SB was a tribute to Dave Thoreson who "invented" this 10 event version.
The Santa Barbara competition got me thinking about how one approaches such an "impossible" event like the 30 minutes decathlon. Well, first there are the rules set by the organisers. The competitors begin on their own in the 100 meters, three minutes apart from each other. At their individual 30 minute mark the athlete’s 1500m time will begin at 30:00, regardless if the athlete is present. Each Decathlete will have a "Dec-Caddy" to support them during the event, keeping track of gear, transition times and more.
Nothing is written about the number of attempts allowed in vertical jumps. They are limited to 6 in the one-hour decathlon so one can surmise that the limit in this event is just 3. In any case given the time constraints I do not think that anybody would be attempting more than two jumps especially in pole vault. For me the best strategy is to start one "safe" jump. Let's say your are a regular 5+ m vaulter. Start with a 4 m jump. This already ensures 700 points. If you can spare the time for a second one you can decide between a 5 m jump (and 300 more points) or something around 4.50 m (for just 150 more points). But the essential thing is to make sure you get those 700 points for a jump at what would have been under regular conditions, a warm-up one. As for the rest, never go for a second attempt unless you have fouled the first one or it was really very, very bad. Finally it is clear that you must sacrifice either the 400 m or the 100 m hurdles. Given the time constraints you cannot go all-out in both (and the same is true for the one-hour decathlon but there at least you can rest for a few minutes between these two events).
Curtis Beach won this event with a total of 6242 points. His performances were: 11.54, 6.70, 11.78, 1.85, 53.26, 16.96, 32.07, 3.65, 40.39, 4:34.09. I have written about Beach in a previous post of mine, since he holds the indoor-heptathlon world record for 1000 m (and the 2nd best decathlon 1500 m). He is a 8000+ decathlete but if one wishes to do comparisons it is better to look at his 2019 best decathlon performance of 7684 points. Compared to this the 6242 points of Beach are slightly above 80 %, a most impressive percentage. (R. Zmelik's one-hour WR is at 90 % of his two-day personal best).
Curtis Beach with the Thoreson trophy
(By the way, why on earth does the IAAF consider J. Joyner-Kersee's 1988 score of 7291 points as the world record? The new specifications for women's javelin were introduced in 1999 and thus, to my eyes, the world record should be C. Klüft's, 2007, performance of 7032 points. Perhaps they think that erasing JJK's record would have been a lese-majesty decision).
If you are interested in the detailed results of the 30-min decathlon you can find them at this link. There was one feminine presence among the athletes who competed for the 30-min decathlon: ex-US heptathlon champion S. Day-Monroe. (She holds the US record for indoor pentathlon with 4805 points). She started practicing pole vault less than a month before the Santa Barbara event but unfortunately she no-heigthed during the decathlon. Here are her performances: 13.49, 5.07, 14.49, 1.60, 1:18.0, 17.42, 29.97, X, 41.30, 7:11.74 for a total of 4860 points. Nothing exceptional but one must take into account that Day-Monroe is not training for heptathlon for two years now. Should she decide to train for the 10 events and if there is another 30-min decathlon next year (a big "if") she could even surpass Beach's mark (but, of course, we are talking about points obtained from the women's tables).
The participants of the 30-min decathlon
Since I was sending a mail to F. Zarnowski, I decided to ask him about the women's decathlon. I was hoping to obtain a technical answer on the difficulties of this event but, unfortunately, his answer did not allow much hope. Here is what he wrote:
I have no strong feeling on the women's decathlon. There is so little interest from the rest of the world that I'd be surprised if it gained in popularity and replaced the current women's combined event.
(The "rest of the world" is a reference to the fact that a women's decathlon was recently organised in the US). Unfortunately if F. Zarnowski, who is Mr. Decathlon, is pessimistic about decathlon becoming the official women's combined event, I do not see how we can expect a major change in the years to come. The only hope is that the initiative of the Women's Decathlon Association does not die out and gets to create emulators in other parts of the world.
First. The difference between the pre 1985 “old” jav and the “new” post 85 javelin is 13 feet fir anyone throwing between 160-230. That is only 56 point difference for men. Hand times for decathlons were converted all the time to auto and auto to hand all the time back in the 80’s. Add .24 for the 100 and hurdles and the 400. 2 if u want too. I had the third highest american score in decathlon in 1983, retired in 1986, i got to throw both the new and old javelin in competition and practice all the time. 200 with the old, 1987 with the new every single throw. The difference in points is about 56 points not 250. I’m saying that’s 56 poonts is comparable to your point about Jackie Joyner-Kersee that’s why they wont take away joyners record.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments Gary.
DeleteConcerning JJK's record, it's a question of principle. The 56 points you mention do not change anything. In order to beat the record an heptathlete has to obtain at least 7292 points. And this is unfair.
So, want to compare the records for the old world record? Add .24 to the 100m and hurdles. .2 for 400, Then subtract 13 feet from their javelin mark. Thats it. One side note, frank had mentioned once in his newsletter that the American decathletes had not thrown as far as bruce jenner who threw 224 im 1976. That is actually incorrect. Jenners 224 would to 211 if he threw the post 1985 javelin. Likewise, ashton eaton throwing 215 with the post 1985 javelin, his mark converts to 228 with the old javelin. Soloman simmons 212 with the new javelin would convert to 225 with the old javelin.
ReplyDelete