The fiftieth anniversary edition of the Götzis Hypomeeting this weekend brings together familiar faces and new decathlon talent, 9000-point legends with 8000-point first timers, global medallists, and new graduates from the U20 ranks.
And that’s just on the track.
Off the track, there is a star-studded audience of former winners in attendance, including 2008 Olympic champion Bryan Clay of the USA, 1998 Olympic champion Christian Schenk of Germany, 1991 world silver-medallist Michael Smith of Canada, and former world-record-holder Guido Kratschmer of Germany.
The greatest of all time, in each of the ten events
As it goes into its second half-century, Götzis enters new territory as a suite of supremely talented, post-NCAA athletes finally make it to the meeting, to join the established names of the European circuit.
And with their arrival, they bolster the suite of all-time greats in each of the individual events of the decathlon. Before we get into the overall shape of the competition, let’s reflect on the significance of the individual marks of those in this year’s Götzis field.
First, some background.
Statistics typically recognise a world best in an individual discipline only if the overall decathlon score is over 7000 points. That avoids specialist athletes collecting a huge compliment of points from their speciality, posting low marks in nine other events, and consequently warping the integrity of the decathlon-best all-time list. Many of the all-time best marks therefore belong to athletes with decathlon PBs between 7000 and 8000 points. But while that is still impressive, it is of limited significance at an elite level.
However, being the greatest ever at an individual event within a decathlon and also being able to score over 8000, 8500 or – in Damian Warner’s case – 9000 points across ten events is a true level of excellence.
We are incredibly lucky to be enjoying decathlon at a moment in time where we have some of the greatest sprinters, jumpers, and throwers the sport has ever seen.
In this year’s Götzis line up:
- Damian Warner of Canada is the fastest of all time in a decathlon 100m, with his PB of 10.12, set in Götzis in 2019 and repeated when he won his Olympic title in Tokyo.
- Simon Ehammer of Switzerland is the greatest long jumper of all time in a decathlon, with 8.45m set in Götzis in 2022 (breaking Warner’s previous record)
- Leo Neugebauer has thrown the shot 17.46m in a decathlon, which is not the greatest of all time, but is less than half a metre behind the only man who has thrown over 18m in an 8000-point decathlon, Michael Smith of Canada
- Sander Skotheim of Norway has jumped 2.19m in a heptathlon, 2.20 overall; and Kyle Garland has jumped 2.19m in a decathlon, which is all the more remarkable given he can also throw close to 17m in the previous event. The elite decathlon bests belong to Christian Schenk (2.27m) and several athletes, including Andrei Krauchanka and Attila Zsivoczky, share 2.22m.
- Ayden Owens-Delerme of Puerto Rico has run 45.07 in a decathlon, a time second only to Ashton Eaton’s 45.00, and mind-blowing when one considers it comes immediately after one of the longest events in the two days, the high jump.
- Back to Damian Warner, and his 110m decathlon all-time best is 13.36s, and he has run faster outwith a decathlon.
- In the discus, so long the kingdom of Bryan Clay with a decathlon best of 55.87m and Lindon Victor with 55.22m, Leo Neugebauer is approaching 60m, with a decathlon best of 57.70m, and 58.70m absolute PB.
- In the pole vault anything above 5.50 is outstanding, but rare, for an elite decathlete (think Tim Bright, Erki Nool and Zach Ziemek) and Harrison Williams has been over 5.40.
- Perhaps the most iconic elite decathlon best of recent years, Niklas Kaul’s 79.05 javelin, set late at night en route to his world title in Doha, keeping his cool while much older and more experienced athletes fell away.
- And with the top ten, sub 4:10, decathlon bests for 1500m dominated by <8000 scores (save for Curtis Beach’s 3:59), Niklas Kaul and Ayden Owens-Delerme with their 4:10 and 4:13 respectively make the 8000-point 4:20 1500m runners appear sedentary.
The greatest of all time in Götzis
Bringing all of these back into this weekend’s competition, the last time anyone who wasn’t Canadian won the Götzis decathlon was in 2015, when Kai Kazmirek (now retired) won for Germany. All but one of those Canadian victories belong to Damian Warner.
At age 35, but still able to bang out 8500+ point decathlons on a bad day, the celebratory feel of the weekend is as much a tribute to eight-time winner Warner as it is to Götzis itself.
For the last decade, Götzis and Warner have been inextricably intertwined. At the half-century point, it seems fitting that the next generation of great decathletes, mostly all here with the exception of current Olympic champion Markus Rooth, gather to challenge him on the ground where 9000 was first scored, and where Warner laid the ground in 2021 for his Olympic title, and his own first 9000-point score.
So far this year, on the margins of his usual Californian pre-season training camp, Warner has done run 10.20s, jumped 7.83m (both a little windy), thrown 14.64m and 49m, and vaulted 4.85m. Those are promising results in a first competition outdoors.
The one remaining barrier left in Warner’s profile is the 5m pole vault, which he has never achieved. Curiously, of the four 9000-point decathletes, only two of them were great pole vaulters. Kevin Mayer and Ashton Eaton excelled in the event, but at the time of his world record Roman Sebrle only had a PB of 5.00m, and indeed only cleared 4.80m in his WR series.
From the 2021 Olympic champion to the 2023 World Champion, and 2023 was Pierce LePage’s year, winning Götzis with 8700, and then the global title in Budapest with 8909, bringing Canada perilously close to having two 9k athletes. Since then, a particularly challenging back injury has sidelined him from competition, but he has run 10.28s and thrown 15.34m and 47.54m already this year.
The world and Olympic bronze medallist from Grenada, Lindon Victor, returns to Götzis. His competitive juices are already in flow, drilling a killer instinct into the kinder of Vorarlberg, as part of the “Kids Athletics” competitions in the run up to the main event.
Victor has characterised his achievements in Budapest and Paris as redemption for failure to capitalise on opportunities in previous championships. With that weight now lifted from his shoulders, Victor can now enjoy his position as multiple global medallist and relax.
He’s joined by his training partners Jack Flood of USA (multiple times over 8k) and Kendrick “Barracuda” Thompson of the Bahamas. Thompson, a spearfisherman away from athletics, has been absent from competition over the last year due to a serious fishing accident. Kendrick is now also sporting a shark bite on his leg, making him a candidate for the most badass decathlete of all time.
Thompson lost his national record to Ken Mullings last year. Mullings scored 8226 at the Olympics, while Thompson’s PB remained at 8182. The most dangerous wildlife Thompson is likely to encounter in the Möslestadion is a mildly irritated rabbit, so there should be little standing in the way of his reclaiming that record.
The new generation
And now to the new generation: Sander Skotheim, Kyle Garland, Ayden Owens-Delerme and Leo Neugebauer. All but Skotheim are making their debut in Götzis.
Sander Skotheim comes off a spectacular indoor season where he demolished Kevin Mayer’s European heptathlon record. Sander scored 6484 in Tallinn and 6558 in Apeldoorn, skidding into third on the all-time list behind Ashton Eaton and Garland. Skotheim added European and World indoor gold to his achievements too.
While the Norwegian’s 8-metre long jump caught attention at the time, it was the improvement in his shot which was most the significant.
Skotheim has long been an excellent all-round jumper, with a killer final run too, but the weaker points in his profile have been in the heavy throws.
With a first time 15m metre mark in Tallinn in February, that signalled a step change in the range of events where Skotheim could collect points. His PB of 8635 set in Rome last year may look like a level below his peers, but the score disguises his talent. That 8635 included a 4.60m pole vault (his best is 5.35m). His score from nine events in Paris (with a 1500m paced to help Rooth, rather than to compete for a medal) was 7757. Skotheim is an 8800+ decathlete, camouflaged by an 8600+ PB.
Leo Neugebauer is widely expected to be the next man over 9000 points, with 8836 and 8961 and multiple 8700+ scores already under his belt at age 24. The Olympic silver medallist’s heavy throws are his speciality and his 58m discus stands out, simply because it is unusual for a decathlete so young to be so strong in the seventh event.
As one of the most technical of the ten events, discus is typically the discipline where marks are slowest to improve. But a strong discus can be a game changer in the flow of Day 2 competition, where technique trumps raw speed, and the dominant Day 1 performers have played all of their cards. All three Olympic medallists in 2024 are excellent discus throwers.
But Neugebauer also brings speed – he is one of several 8m long jumpers in the field – and now that he has also brought his 1500m time down to under 4:40, it is only his javelin where there is scope for significant improvement. Neugebauer’s javelin PB is 58.99m, and “Is Leo going to throw his discus further than his javelin?” is a favourite game to play during his decathlon.
Kyle Garland’s greatest moment in a decathlon was improving his PB from 8196 to 8720 at the US trials in 2022. For those of us covering Ratingen on the same weekend that year, the results came through in the small hours after competition had ended in Germany, creating an unforgettable “do you remember where you were when Kyle Garland scored 8700? moment.
For one reason or another, that hasn’t yet translated into big international honours for Garland. There are 8500+ and 8600+ scores in his portfolio, but in a country where there are half a dozen guys at that standard, Garland hasn’t yet come out on top. Without the visibility of the European circuit, Garland is also massively underappreciated. An appearance in Götzis will give Garland the platform he deserves to get back up to 8700 because, frankly, anyone who can throw almost 17m and jump almost 2.20m is ace.
Like Garland, Ayden Owens-Delerme hasn’t had too much exposure in competition in Europe beyond championships, but his progression is well known in combined events circles. From a precocious first senior 8000-point score aged 18, to regular 8000+ scores sparring with Neugebauer and Garland in college, and of course his indoor heptathlon 6518, third of all time until he was bumped down a place by Skotheim this year. Like his peers, Owens-Delerme has now tackled the weak points in his decathlon, less reliant on the magnificence of his 400m and 1500m, and much more able to land strong, consistent marks across all ten events. That has brought him up to 8732, achieved at Mt SAC in 2024.
Strength in field depth
Such is the calibre of the Götzis field that we haven’t even got to the athletes whom we would expect to headline any other meet.
Five Americans are competing in the decathlon this weekend, and the other three (alongside Garland, Flood) are Health Baldwin, Harrison Williams, and Hakim McMorris.
Harrison Williams is the most established of the three, consistently around 8500 and 8600 in recent years, and crucially has developed nerves of steel. He had some major hiccups during qualification at the US trials for Paris but was able to hold his nerve and land the performance he needed to make the US team.
He has a new training partner, in the shape of Hakim McMorris (both coached by Kris Mack) who won the Thorpe Cup last year, following an improvement into 8000 territory. For those who haven’t seen McMorris compete, he has a wonderful, easy rhythm in the jumps which is a joy to watch, and more points are certainly sure to come.
Heath Baldwin’s breakthrough came in 2024, when he improved from a PB of 8084 to 8470 at Mt SAC and 8625 at the US Olympic trials. He is now training with Petros Kyprianou at Illinois alongside Owens-Delerme, Garret Scantling (who becomes eligible to compete again this year), Aiden Ouimet, Jip de Greef and Rafael Raap. Like Garland, he has dual strength in the third and fourth events, brining a 16.52m shot and a 2.17m high jump.
While Garland’s current training partner Janek Õiglane is missing Götzis (currently celebrating the birth of his first child) he will be reunited with another Estonian former UGA teammate, Karel Tilga. Tilga led a suite of powerful Estonian performances in Budapest in 2023, and that year scored 8482 in Multistars, 8403 in Götzis and then 8681 for fourth place in Budapest. Tilga has been below par over the last wee while but leads the Estonian contingent which includes 2023 European Indoor bronze medallist Risto Lillemets, and the latest recruit to the Estonian 8k club, Rasmus Roosleht.
The 2019 world champion and 2022 European champion Niklas Kaul opens his season this weekend. Kaul often observes that Gotzis is a little early in the season for him, and with the world championships in Tokyo closer in timing to that of his October victory in Doha, we’re likely looking for clues as to what Kaul has been working on, rather than a rounded performance. Kaul is one of a five-strong German contingent, which includes Neugebauer, Tim Nowak and Manuel Eitel.
The 2022 European silver decathlon medallist Simon Ehammer opened his season in Multistars a few weeks ago, and while a botched long jump cost him an 8000+ score, there is much to be excited about for Ehammer from the season so far. In particular, his high jump and discus look promising, the events most affected by his shoulder surgery a few years back. After a long period where he was unable to get over 2m, Ehammer has finally made it back to 2.07m, just one cm short of his PB.
In the discus, he has improved to 42.72m already this year, and if he can get to a consistent 45m, it will stem the Day 2 haemorrhaging of points and make it that much harder for the strong finishers to reel him in. His 1500m is looking good too, getting closer to 4:40 – even with no chance of victory in Multistars (Lewis Church was already ahead and considerably faster) Ehammer easily ran a time which would have been his best effort a few years ago.
Ehammer brings with him fellow Swiss decathletes Finley Gaio, and Andrin Huber. Huber graces the May page of the 2025 Decathletes of Europe calendar, with his glorious 1500m run in Götzis last year. Markus Rooth was the August page in the 2024 calendar and won the Olympics that month, so read into that what you will for Huber. But Huber will have a special challenge this year in Götzis – he is practically impossible to beat in a decathlon 1500m, but with Ayden Owens-Delerme in town he’s going to have to work hard to protect his unbeaten streak.
Huber was of course the European U20 bronze medallist from 2023, and there is something of a reunion this year, as Germany’s Amadeus Graber and Austria’s Matthias Lasch – gold and silver medallists respectively – make their debut in Götzis. The 2024 World U20 champion Tomas Jarvinen of Czechia is here too. Graber and Jarvinen both had their eye on Niklas Kaul’s WU20 record, but Graber was timed out with injury and Jarvinen missed it by 10 points in Lima (scoring 8425, albeit with some doubts about the measurement of his 7.66m jump).
As always, a little shout out for Huber, Graber, Lasch, and Jarvinen’s peer Petr Svoboda (who competed with them in Jerusalem at the EU20s in 2023) and who recently underwent a stem-cell transplant for leukaemia. He’s slowly working back to training, and all our good wishes go with him.
We’ll also see a suite of other strong athletes this weekend. The 2024 Multistars winner Jente Hauttekeete of Belgium and Jeff Tesselaar of the Netherlands bring the bestie-rivalry we all need, as they renew their event-by-event scorecard from Apeldoorn. Rik Taam of the Netherlands is here too, as is Edgaras Benkunskas of Lithuania and Vilem Strasky of Czechia (who has switched coaches from Roman Sebrle, and now training with Jarvinen under Josef Karas, who has returned to decathlon coaching).
Jose Fernando Ferreira Santana of Brazil broke the South American heptathlon record indoors this year and has his eyes on the equivalent outdoor record held by Carlos Chinin, 8393 set in 2013. Dario Dester of Italy returns to competition, now training with Eitel and Gaio in Ulm under the eye of former German national coach Christopher Hallman.
And finally, there are three British decathletes competing in Götzis this weekend, two of them already 8000-point athletes and the other bound to join them shortly.
Lewis Church won Multistars in April, following in the footsteps of Markus Rooth and Karel Tilga in recent years, scoring 8067 and joining the 8k club. Jack Turner brings his 8000 from his NCAA career to make his debut in Götzis. And Sammy Ball – a contemporary of Huber, Graber, and Lasch – brings a brand-new long jump best of 7.57m. He started the year with a PB of 7.23, and that bodes very well for his decathlon PB of 7913 set in Talence last September.
You can find the full details of the competition here.
All words and photos (other than calendar pics) by Gabby Pieraccini
