A collection of decathlon-related movies

I have already written about the Deca Passion site. It is, to my eyes, the best decathlon-related site out there. It was created by Frédéric Gousset and is currently maintained by the two, father and son, Gousset. F. Gousset is the author of an excellent book on decathlon "Des hommes complets", definitely the best monograph on decathlon in french language. Speaking of which, this is the only drawback of the Deca Passion site: it is in french. But if you can stand the google translation pidgin, it is definitely a site you should visit.

Over the winter period, the Gousset decided to publish a series of 10 articles related to movies that tell the story of the decathlon. Did they have a premonition? How could they imagine that 2020 was going to be a black year as far as results are concerned? In any case the videos of the articles would be most appropriate for the long summer evenings, during your vacations deprived of Diamond League meetings. So as not to have to track down the links one by one (in particular, if you are not fluent in french) I include them below. On the other hand, if you can read french I urge you to read the articles. Even if you are a decathlon specialist, you are going to learn something. 

Chronologically the presentation should have started with the movie on Jim Thorpe but it appears only in third place in the list. Unfortunately his 1912 olympic combined events competition was not filmed and the video in Deca Passion is the trailer of the movie with Burt Lancaster. A documentary on Thorpe does exist and is more interesting that the Hollywood movie. 

G. Morris by L. Riefenstahl 

Things get better with the L. Riefenstahl documentary Olympia, where one finds a long sequence on G. Morris and his victory in the decathlon. 

Then follow videos from the 1972 victory of M. Avilov, filmed by none other than M. Forman. The 1984 olympic duel between Thompson and Higsen comes next, a duel that ended with the victory of Thompson and a world record. 

Thompson and Higsen battling it out

Then comes the European Cup of 1983, which apparently is of historical importance to the french decathlon fans. The fabulous Jenner decathlon in Montréal comes next. It starts with the famous quote by Jenner: "The Decathlon is a big brick wall that nobody ever is going to be able to climb. It has no mercy. It's awesome and scary. It will knock you down so fast. Nobody ever beats the Decathlon". Well, definitely Jenner came close.

B. Jenner crossing the line at the 1500 m

E. Nool's unexpected victory in Sydney, 2000, comes next, followed by D. O'Brien's 1992 world record in Talence. However the video of the latter focuses mainly on the 1500 m with just a few shots of the other events and is thus less interesting. The real gem of the video collection is the Rome, 1960, olympic decatlhon and the duel between R. Johnson and C.K. Yang. 

Yang and Johnson exhausted after their 1500 m

If you watch just one video this is the one you should not miss. (In the opening sequence on has a glimpse of the greek champion P. Epitropoulos with whom I had the occasion to train for a few months back in the day). Yang went on to establish a new world record and there is a video of this as well, where, unless I am wrong, Yang attempts a world record in the pole vault, during the decathlon! Yang broke the 9000 mark, with the table used at that time, and this was also the first 8000+ WR with the current table.

Finally the long road of K. Mayer towards the world record (in Talence, 2018) caps the collection. 

An interesting site

From time to time I give links to interesting sites with athletics news. This time I am presenting you the italian site of Atleticalive

It has various news, mainly italian (but not only) and is very regularly updated. And, in case you were worried about not having mastered the language of Dante, the site is presented in both italian and english. Initially I was planning to publish the screenshot below, then I  found that it was not the best choice and chose the one on the demise of Leila Koné (a most promising long jumper of ivorian origin with italian nationality). But then I decided that after all I was going to publish the news on S. Gnezdilov (born in Ukraine, she moved to Israel in 1996). 

It goes without saying that she claims to be innocent and that her centres were just normal parlors. 

Coleman did it again

Those who follow my blog have certainly noticed that I do not particularly like Coleman. He has something that upsets me. And what happened last year was the last straw. 

Last year, the USADA (yes, those are the very same gentlemen who find that WA is not punishing Russia harshly enough) cleared Coleman of a potential doping violation allowing him to participate in the 2019 World Championships. Coleman was initially charged with three whereabout failures over 12 months. This would entail a 2 year ban. But not in the case of Coleman. USADA backdated one of the failures and made possible Coleman's participation in the World's.

Coleman is in real trouble now

Perhaps some details are necessary here. All top athletes must provide detailed information on where they will be each day so that they can be tested for doping out of competition. In practice they must provide a one-hour window of availability every day. There are two types of whereabouts failures: a missed test, and a filing failure. A missed test correspond to the impossibility to locate the athlete during the one-hour window. A filing failure corresponds to inaccurate or incomplete information provided by the athlete but also to an attempt by the control officer to test the athlete outside the one-hour window.

This last point is the crucial one. While a missed test correspond to a specific date, a filing failure is backdated to the start of the quarter in which it occurred. Coleman had a missed test on January 16, 2019 and two filing failures on June 6, 2018, and April 26. But the latter were backdated to 2019 April 1, 2018 and April 1, 2019 and as a consequence they did not fall within a 365-day period. (Yes, that's correct. The USADA decided that the two dates were separated by one year and one day). But wait, there's more. On June 6, 2018 the tester showed up at Coleman's residence at 0755 at allegedly started the collection attempt at 0801, one minute outside the collection window. So this failure was considered as a filing one. By one minute margin. And Coleman was finally scot-free.

What is really incredible is that after last year's near-miss, where the USADA lost all credibility by clearing him, Coleman should have been particularly vigilant. But what he did was to miss another whereabout test. And since the latter was in December 9, 2019 there is now an unambiguous count of 3 misses within one year which is tantamount to a doping violation entailing a two-year ban (more on this later).

Coleman's arguments are puerile. He was out dong Christmas shopping. He was just five minutes away. The tester didn’t even bother to call him. (In this case the officials belonged to the Athletics Integrity Unit, applying strictly the protocol that does not allow phone calls. When the tests are implemented by the USADA the athletes are forewarned by a phone call. Which gives the athletes definitely a leeway and allows them in principle to avoid undesirable tests). 

And Coleman added:

“I think the attempt on December 9 was a purposeful attempt to get me to miss a test. I’ve been contacted by phone literally every other time I’ve been tested. Why would the AIU tell (the tester) not to call me?!”

The statement of the AIU on this point was clear:

“Any advanced notice of testing, in the form of a phone call or otherwise, provides an opportunity for athletes to engage in tampering or evasion or other improper conduct which can limit the efficacy of testing”.

The reactions were swift. K. Stefanidi, Olympic and World Champion, wrote:

“Just to be clear, testers DO NOT call you when they can’t find you. I have only heard of this happening to US athletes (many different athletes and occasions). Unless USADA has different rules than WADA, testers don’t call. You’re either where you said you’ll be or you’re not”. Coleman immediately lashed out at her: "What was your purpose in commenting?... If you had nothing positive to say why say anything at all".

M. Johnson (Olympic and World champion) wrote: "After a close call last year for three whereabout failures or missed tests, for Coleman to allow this to happen again will lead people to believe either you’re doping or you don’t take seriously the anti-doping efforts of the sport. What reason do we have to believe otherwise?". Later he added: “This from Christian Coleman: ‘I am willing to take a drug test every single day for the rest of my career for all I care to prove my innocence.’ Proving your innocence is the very reason athletes follow the whereabouts and testing rules which he has repeatedly violated!” And he finished with the remark "It’s clear to me he struggles to understand rules, process, professionalism. We should not assume his lack of understanding of those to mean he’s not hiding something. That’s always a possibility and that is the purpose of the anti-doping process and suspension for violating it".

D. Greene (World, European and Commonwealth champion) has a long twitter thread. It's too long to report here but highly informative. I suggest that you track it down and read it.

Ross Tucker, a sports physiologist for whom I have a high esteem, commented:

The “Where’s Christian?” game has a new twist. If you got so close to a ban before, escaping it so publicly only months before, I’d have thought you’d take no chances in your window. That said, if you want ‘slam-dunks’, anti-doping needs to do the little things better too.

And, later, he added:

Coleman’s statement "I am willing to take a drug test EVERY single day for the rest of my career for all I care to prove my innocence" jumped out. The Whereabouts system is designed specifically to provide this reassurance. The athlete already has an opportunity to “take a drug test every single day” (in theory). What they have to do is be where they said for an hour.

As a consequence of the missed tests Coleman is facing a two year suspension. His provisional suspension is listed as May 14, 2020, a full 13 months before the start of U.S. Olympic Trials. The Tokyo Olympics were rescheduled because of the pandemic and will open on July 23, 2021. With a two-year ban Coleman will be out of the Olympics. But wait!  The rules allow for the possibility to reduce the ban to just one year. So now Coleman claims that a two-year sentence would be ‘overkill’.  “In situations in the past, I’ve seen people get suspended for only a year,” he said. So he hopes that ‘some sort of deal’ might be agreed where he is suspended but could return just for the US olympic trials. If that turned out to be the case it would be a major blow to the credibility of athletics. And it would do disservice to all the US athletes who do not depend on their federation little schemes in order to excel. I cross my fingers for this not to happen but I am not overly optimistic. I am sure the CEO of USADA will explain to everybody that Coleman is a victim and that the real culprits are the russian. 

There is a slight hope that there will not be unwarranted tolerance concerning Coleman. In fact, the WA president told the media that he "would be very surprised if there was any thought that a deal is going to be struck here or in any of these cases. It’s just not the system. That is not what the AIU does”. While not mentioning Coleman by name he added "If you’re hanging by a thread on one or even two of misses, then my instinct would be to be sitting by my front door for that hour. You wouldn’t risk not being there. And if they fall foul of this regularly they will be banned. I can’t put it in any blunter way. And that is what the AIU is there to do. It’s not a sort of an afterthought. Alongside biological passports and adverse analytical findings it is a central part of the anti-doping landscape”.

I do not particularly like Coleman and I think that there should be no clemency in this case of missed tests but it may turn out that Coleman gets away with a slap on the hand. After all we have seen, Gatlin, a double doping offender, win a world title. But let us keep in mind that doping suspicions have the bad tendency to cling to the individual. There are people who are ready to lump Coleman in with a list of other big-name Americans such as Tim Montgomery, Marion Jones, Justin Gatlin and Tyson Gay who have been busted for doping over the years. As far as I am concerned I reserve my opinion. Time will tell.

Olympic combined events at the turn of the century (the previous one)

The idea of a combined event is not new. It goes back to the ancient Olympic Games and the ancient pentathlon. I have already devoted articles in this blog on that classical event, so there is no point in writing about that here. If you haven't read them, you can just follow the links, to the first and the second article.

When the first modern Olympics were organised in Athens in 1896, there were no combined events in the program. There was a plan to include a pentathlon in the 1896 program but was apparently dropped by de Coubertin in early 1895. Neither was anything organised in Paris in 1900 although a pentathlon was listed on the program: it was never contested. (The only reason those farcical Paris competitions were considered Olympic Games is because de Coubertin decided so. In fact it is really a pity that Greece got involved into de Coubertin's olympic plans. Had he organised the first "olympics" in Paris in 1900, as he wished, his plans would have gone down the drain and the world could have been better off for this). Combined events made their appearance for the first time in St. Louis in 1904 (another farcical organisation). 

I have perused the two reports on the 1904 Olympiad, the one of C. Lucas and that of J. Sullivan in order to find some indication as to what really happened. But first let us have a look at the position of the IOC. There are two combined events, recognised post-facto as olympic ones: the triathlon and the all-around. Recognising the first one as part of athletics is a pure mockery. It was part of gymnastics. The results from this event (comprising long jump, shot put, and a 100 yard dash) were combined with the ones of the gymnastics triathlon event in order to determine the winner of the gymnastics all-around event. So the athletes who participated at this event were the ones competing in gymnastics and not the one of track and field. Just 10 out of the 118 participants were non-american (9 germans and one swiss). The crushing presence of the US athletes in the 1904 Games is present also in the medal table where the USA obtained 68 out of a total of 74 medals (23 out of 25 gold). 

There is not a single mention of combined events in Lucas's report. Neither is there a mention of the triathlon in the report of Sullivan although he mentions the best all-around field sports in relation to the gymnastics championship. However in his report one finds a most interesting paragraph concerning the all-around competition. It was not an olympic event but just a national championship (which, by the way, was won by T. Kiely, an irishman). Now, why on earth was this event promoted to olympic status, is a pure mystery to me (but I suspect that A. Brundage, the mastermind behind many olympic chicaneries, has something to do with this). 

We can as well forget about the St. Louis combined events, and turn to the first event worth its name, the pentathlon of the 1906 Games. The idea was to somehow recreate the ancient pentathlon. The events were standing (why?) long jump, discus (greek style), stadium (192 m) race, javelin and wrestling. A point system was introduced in which athletes earned 1 point for first place, 2 points for second place etc., and the winner was the one with the lowest tally. 

The story is told in every detail in the excellent book of F. Zarnowski "The Pentathlon of the Ancient World". The favourite for the gold medal was M. Sheridan who had entered 10 (!) different events. However he injured himself in the first event and dropped out of the competition. The favourites were now E. Lemming, the javelin olympic champion, and I. Mudin who had placed 4th in the discus throw event. 

Mudin throwing the discus

According to Zarnowski, as per the ancient rules only the winners of the first three events (Robertson, Mudin and Lemming) would have advanced to the sprint. As it were, at this point all but the eight men with the worst (highest) scores were eliminated, and after the stadium, two more men with the highest scores were eliminated, leaving six men with lowest scores for the wrestling. Robertson, who had won the long jump and the stadium run dropped out at that point, since he had no chance in the wrestling. 

After 4 events the rank was: Mellander 21, Mudin 24 and Lemming 25 (Häggman and Lindberg being out of medal reach with 32 points). Mudin was a certain winner of the wrestling which would bring his tally to 25. Häggman had already beaten Mellander and it happened that the last match was between Lemming and Mellander. The former had no chance to win and he just let his compatriot beat him in wrestling resulting in Mellander's win by just one point over Mudin. 

Zarnowski points out that 

In 1906 the actions of Lemming and Mellander never became an issue. There were no charges of chicanery, no investigation, no hearings, no disqualification, no fines. No big deal. Olympic historians, perhaps unwilling or unable to unravel the scoring morass, appear to be completely unaware of the issue. For his part Lemming may have been lauded (at least in Sweden) for his sportsmanship; 1906 was a different era. Identical actions today would create a furor.

The story of the 1906 pentathlon does not end there. For his victory Mellander was awarded a superb trophy. 

Then in 1907 he was informed by the Greek Organising Committee that the trophy he had received was a so called challenge trophy and therefore had to be returned for the next (greek) Games of 1910 (they never took place). Mellander refused to return the trophy and the letters from Greece became more and more threatening. The Swedish federation intervened and promised Mellander a special memorial prize to replace the Trophy, as soon as the latter had been returned. De Coubertin chimed in confirming that the trophy was indeed a challenge one. Finally, with the 1912 Games scheduled in Sweden, Mellander agreed to return the trophy. It shipped from Liverpool (where Mellander was living) but the ship perished in a storm! However as chance would have it the trophy was saved. It was later exhibited during the 1912 Olympics. Supposedly the trophy was to be sent after the Games to de Coubertin himself who would take care of the matter. However there is no trace of it after 1912 and nobody knows today the whereabouts of the famous trophy. Fortunately the IOC discontinued in 1923 the practice of awarding challenge trophies.