In my post on women's combined events where I repeat my mantra that women's heptathlon should disappear in favour of the decathlon I pointed out that I did not like the men's indoor heptathlon either. In fact I do like the women's pentathlon although it does not include any technically challenging event besides the hurdles. Having all five events concentrated in just one day is great and I would prefer to see men's indoor combined event reduced to a single-day pentathlon. Of course, people will argue that the pole vault does make a difference and we have seen many a favourites drop out of the competition after having fouled out their initial height in pole vault.
Still my preference goes to the pentathlon and I decide to do a small experiment in order to see what would have happened in the last indoor Europeans if the athletes were competing in just five events. Quite admittedly the study I propose is somehow flawed because the event was organised as a heptathlon, over two days, the athletes had to run the 60 m and participate in the pole vault and the order was not exactly that of the women's pentathlon. But let us ignore this and find out what would have been the classification over the pentathlon events: 60 m hurdles, long jump, shot put, high jump and 1000 m. (The women are running a 800 m and one can wonder whether it would have been preferable that the men's pentathlon include the shorter distance, but, after all men jump over higher hurdles and throw a heavier shot, so having to run one more round at the end is not crucial, and in any case the only available results are the ones over 1000 m).
So, here is the classification over the five pentathlon events (in parentheses their heptathlon rank).
1 (2) Skotheim 4543
2 (1) Mayer 4408
3 (3) Lillemets 4273
4 (4) Eitel 4247
5 (9) Gletty 4236
6 (5) Ureña 4220
7 (7) Nowak 4153
8 (6) Kopecky 4092
9 (10) Hausenberg 4059
10 (8) Nilsson 3987
Skotheim would have won that hypothetical pentathlon, with Mayer obtaining the second place while Lillemets would have conserved his bronze medal. What is interesting is that while Gletty and Hausenberg fouled out in the pole vault, both ran the 1000 m (although for Hausenberg it was more of a token participation). So they could obtain a place in the pentathlon, with Gletty placing 5th.
One of the favourites for the heptathlon, S. Ehammer fouled out in his specialty event, the long jump and dropped out of the competition. This is not the first time Ehammer fouls out from a heptathlon: the same scenario took place in the 2021 Europeans' only on that occasion Ehammer no-heighted at the pole vault. He did not participate in the 1000 m but I decided to obtain his pentathlon scoring taking his personal best over the distance (2:51.14). Contrary to what I was thinking the pentathlon performance of Ehammer was not really exceptional. He would have scored 4344 points, obtaining just the fourth place. (Mayer won the heptathlon with 6392 points and scored 4487 points in the pentathlon. Ureña was second overall with 6158 points and 4406 at the heptathlon, while heptathlon 4th placing Taam, with 4358 points in the pentathlon, would still beat Ehammer).
Ehammer had a better pentathlon score in the 2022 indoor World's with 4438 points. D. Warner who won the heptathlon competition with 6489 points on that occasion had a pentathlon scoring of 4610 points, which is his personal best. Mayer's pentathlon personal best was obtained at the 2017 World championships where he won the heptathlon with 6479 points and scored 4544 points in the pentathlon.
The world heptathlon record at this date belongs to A. Eaton, from 2012, with 6645 points. The corresponding pentathlon performance was 4715. It was the best performance over the five events till the recent indoor NCAA championships. On that occasion K. Garland came within a breath of Eaton's record, scoring 6639 points. His pentathlon score is the unofficial world best with 4750 points (7.74, 7.96, 16.45, 2.12, 2:41.36) topping the one of Eaton. And what is really impressive is that in the same competition Owens-Delerme was second with 6518 points in the heptathlon (which is the third all-time performance) and scored 4654 points in the pentathlon (again the third-best performance). Next summer's decathlon world championships will really be awesome.
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