“It’s showtime”, said 2022 European champion Niklas Kaul of Germany ahead of the start of the 2026 European Championships decathlon.
And the second major athletics championships in the United Kingdom in as many weeks brought some VIP weather for decathletes, substituting the damp air and rainclouds of Glasgow for blue skies and 25-degree sunshine.
Kaul won this event at home in Munich in 2022, in a thrilling showdown with Simon Ehammer of Switzerland.
This year, Ehammer chose to compete in the individual long jump, since the timetable prevented him from doing both events (going straight from the long jump final into the decathlon without any recovery time). He was rewarded last night with the silver medal, after leading the competition early on.
Kaul passed on his 2022 title to Johannes Erm of Estonia in 2024 in Rome, who himself had a keen competition with Sander Skotheim of Norway. With a PB score of 8764, Erm came within sight of Erki Nool’s longstanding national record of 8815 points. Absent from that competition was the 2025 world champion, Leo Neugebauer, who was still deep in his NCAA commitments. Those commitments delivered a score of 8961, breaking Jurgen Hingsen’s ancient German record. Skotheim would join the German over 8900 points the following year in Götzis.
So the big three – Neugebauer, Skotheim and Erm – meet for the first time in a European championships. Among them only Neugebauer has completed a decathlon this year, scoring 8730 behind Ehammer in Götzis, and 8573 to win in Ratingen. Skotheim aborted the indoor season for surgery, recovering well but with an additional niggle in Götzis towards which he exercised caution and withdrew from competition. Erm has competed in only individual events this year, with modest but promising results.
100m
With no season’s performance to inform seeding, the defending champion Erm found himself in the slowest heat, but with 10.88s he ran faster than both the world champion Neugebauer (10.90s), and Skotheim (10.95s) did in the later heats.
Although Kaul is always in the slowest heat of the competition, and on occasion dead last after the first event, it’s always worth checking just how fast he has run. Every little point counts in the decathlon, and Kaul got a good haul on this occasion, with a season’s best of 11.23s, only just over a tenth outside his PB. That’s faster than he ran when winning the world title in 2019, and faster than he ran when finishing fourth in Tokyo in 2025.
Nino Portmann is no stranger to the top of the leaderboard in the first few events of the decathlon, but this is the first time the Swiss has done so at a major international championships, running 10.69s to get the competition started. Portmann has been consistently close to breaking 8000 points this year, 7930 at Multistars in April, 7982 at the Swiss championships in June and 7947 in Poland in July.
After one event:
- 1.Nino Portmann (SUI) 931
- 2.Jeff Tesselaar (NED) 917
- 3.Amadeus Graeber (GER) 908
- 4.Makenson Gletty (FRA) 906
- 5.Tomas Jarvinen (CZE) 901
- 6.Dario Dester (ITA) 897
- 7.Vilem Strasky (CZE) 888
- 8.Johannes Erm (EST) 888
- 9.Leo Neugebauer (GER) 883
- 10.Dai Keita (BEL) 883
- 11.Rasmus Roosleht (EST)881
- 12.Sander Skotheim (NOR) 872
- 13.Zsombor Galpal (HUN) 870
- 14.Andrin Huber (SUI) 865
- 15.Risto Lillemets (EST) 841
- 16.Jip de Greef (NED) 834
- 17.Alberto Nonnino (ITA) 825
- 18.Ondrej Kopecky (CZE) 814
- 19.Karel Tilga (EST) 812
- 20.Niklas Kaul (GER) 810
- 21.Edgaras Benkunskas (LTU) 801
- 22.Emil Uhlin (SWE) 801
- 23.Luuk Pelkmans (NED) 799
- 24.Leon Krummenacher (SUI) 782
- 25. Antoine Ferranti (FRA) 780
Long jump
Notwithstanding the otherwise good conditions, blustery and unpredictable wind affected the long jump. Some like Neugebauer and Erm had -2.0+ gusts blowing head on into their big jumps, others were luckier with neutral or slightly favourable winds.
Even with no Ehammer to throw big shapes in the long jump pit, the field had two athletes who had previously jumped eight metres, Neugebauer and Skotheim.
They both jumped well, with little sign of Skotheim’s Götzis niggle in his performance. That bodes well for his signature event, the high jump, later on in the evening session.
The German and the Norwegian jumped 7.82m and 7.80m respectively, which took them from ninth and twelfth place after the first event to first and third after two.
Jeff Tesselaar of the Netherlands, the second fastest in the 100m with 10.75s, continued to provide the filling for the first and third place overall score sandwich. The Dutchman is almost as good a long jumper as the big names around him, 7.76m at his best, and went to 7.67m in Birmingham.
Vilem Strasky of Czechia enjoyed the only lifetime best of the discipline (and the first one from anyone thus far in the competition) with 7.54m.
Johannes Erm continued what appears to be a well-timed recovery from injury to jump 7.49m, the fifth best performance overall.
Niklas Kaul had another decent event, with 7.22m. He has a best of 7.44m but is much more typically to be found in the 7.20-7.30m region. That moved the German from twentieth to seventeenth.
Unfortunately the Götzis Rookie of the year, Tomas Jarvinen of Czechia, withdrew from the competition with injury.
After two events:
- 1.Leo Neugebauer (GER) 1898
- 2.Jeff Tesselaar (NED) 1894
- 3.Sander Skotheim (NOR) 1882
- 4.Nino Portmann (SUI) 1849
- 5.Vilem Strasky (CZE) 1833
- 6. Johannes Erm (EST) 1820
- 7. Amadeus Graeber (GER) 1777
- 8. Dai Keita (BEL) 1776
- 9. Makenson Gletty (FRA) 1768
- 10. Tomas Jarvinen (CZE) 1758
- 11. Dario Dester (ITA) 1739
- 12. Luuk Pelkmans (NED) 1719
- 13. Andrin Huber (SUI) 1693
- 14. Karel Tilga (EST) 1693
- 15. Antoine Ferranti (FRA) 1688
- 16. Rasmus Roosleht (EST) 1683
- 17. Niklas Kaul (GER) 1676
- 18. Jip de Greef (NED) 1652
- 19. Ondrej Kopecky (CZE) 1652
- 20. Risto Lillemets (EST) 1648
- 21. Alberto Nonnino (ITA) 1617
- 22. Edgaras Benkunskas (LTU) 1591
- 23. Zsombor Galpal (HUN) 1558
- 24. Emil Uhlin (SWE) 1549
- 25. Leon Krummenacher (SUI) 1479
Shot
Into the shot and Leo Neugebauer relieved Pascal Behrenbruch of his championship decathlon shot record (16.89m) with a throw of 17.13m. It may not be the first of the heavy throw records to be pulverized this week either. The championships decathlon discus best is only 52.06m.
Beyond Neugebauer, the athletes one would expect to have big throws over 15m, had big throws over 15m: Rasmus Roosleht of Estonia with 15.88m and Makenson Gletty of France with 15.65m.
Next was Risto Lillemets of Estonia, who has improved his shot PB this season to 15.81m, and continued his strong 15m plus form with 15.47m.
The current suite of top-class Dutch decathletes comes from two training groups, the Fox fighters (coached by Ingmar “Fox” himself) based in the Netherlands, and the “Petros’ Dojo” contingent based in Illinois, coached by Petros Kyprioanou (who also has world outdoor and indoor bronze medallists, Ayden Owens-Delerme and Heath Baldwin respectively, in his squad).
Tesselaar (and the injured Sven Roosen) are in the former, the European U20 silver medallist Luuk Pelkmans and Jip de Greef the latter.
Pelkmans has a curiously good shot for an athlete in his first senior year, throwing 15.16m (he has a PB of 15.70m). But behind him, Jeff Tesselaar brought the biggest surprise of the decathlon so far – a 50cm PB of 15.11m in the third event.
That kept Tesselaar in second with a more significant gap to Skotheim than we might otherwise have expected – 52 points.
However, the next event is Skotheim’s piece de resistance, the high jump in which he can leap 2.21m at his best. With the injury he has been carrying, his season’s best this year is only 2.08m – of course good enough to be at the top end of a decathlon high jump field, but way short of the vertiginous heights which provide an injection of energy to his decathlon towards the end of the first day.
There are other good jumpers in the field to help push him. Jarvinen won’t bring that challenge, unfortunately, but Antoine Ferranti of France has cleared 2.12m this year and Pelkmans 2.09m.
Niklas Kaul is now lurking in 12th place, rising from 20th after the 100m and 17th after the long jump. A good rule of thumb is if Niklas Kaul is in the top ten at the end of day one, he’s probably going to get you on day two. Kaul’s chase is well underway.
After three:
- 1. Neugebauer 2819
- 2. Tesselaar (NED) 2690
- 3. Skotheim (NOR) 2638
- 4. Gletty (FRA) 2598
- 5. Erm (EST) 2582
- 6. Portmann (SUI) 2577
- 7. Strasky (CZE) 2567
- 8. Roosleht (EST) 2527
- 9. Pelkmans (NED) 2519
- 10. Tilga (EST) 2511
- 11. Dester (ITA) 2497
- 12 Kaul (GER) 2482
- 13. Lillemets (EST) 2467
- 14. Graeber (GER) 2462
- 15. Huber (SUI) 2459
- 16. Keita (BEL) 2429
- 17. Benkunskas (LTU) 2371
- 18. Ferranti (FRA) 2361
- 19. De Greef (NED) 2344
- 20. Kopecky (CZE) 2325
- 21. Galpal (HUN) 2321
- 22. Uhlin (SWE) 2224
- 23. Nonnino (ITA) 2195
- 24. Krummenacher (SUI) 2175
- 25. Jarvinen (CZE) DNF
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Written by: Gabby Pieraccini
