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.