Ten events still mint the title World's Greatest Athlete
The decathlon packs ten track-and-field tests across two days; Greek déka and áthlon name it. Gustav V told Jim Thorpe he was the world's greatest athlete after the 1912 Stockholm Olympic win—a tag that stuck. Frenchman Kevin Mayer holds the world record at 9126 points.
Modern order: 100 m, long jump, shot, high jump, 400 m, then 110 m hurdles, discus, pole vault, javelin, and 1500 m. Roots reach the ancient pentathlon of 708 BC Olympia and U. S. all-around meets of 1884 and 1904 before the full ten-event Olympic form.
The American all-around, first held at the 1884 amateur championships, had settled into a consistent shape by 1890, though whether the 1904 Olympic version counted officially is disputed. Top men's decathlons run over two days, and by tradition every finisher, not just the medallists, joins a lap of honour afterwards. Scoring uses 2001 IAAF formulas in which each discipline has its own parameters, rewarding faster times and longer or higher marks, and benchmark tables show what each event demands for 700, 800, 900 or 1000 points. Masters athletes have their marks age-graded first and use lighter implements and lower hurdles.
Mayer's total, set at the 2018 Décastar in Talence, broke Ashton Eaton's 9045. Women usually contest the seven-event heptathlon, or the five-event pentathlon before 1981, but scoring tables for a women's decathlon were approved in 2001, and Lithuania's Austra Skujytė holds that record with 8358. In the one-hour decathlon the 1500 m must start within sixty minutes of the first event; Robert Změlík set its record of 7897 in Ostrava in 1992. On Bojidar Spiriev's cross-event tables, 9006 decathlon points rate the same as an 18-metre triple jump.
Source: Decathlon
