This weekend at Decastar in Talence, it’s the last chance saloon of the combined events season. Some are on victory tours. Some are seeking to capitalise on breakthroughs earlier in the season. For some, it’s another step on a long, tough comeback. And for some – on the site of Kevin Mayer’s greatest revenge PB in history – it’s a chance for redemption in decathlon and heptathlon.
DECATHLON
The headliner for the decathlon is the pride of Grenada, new World bronze medallist Lindon Victor; fresh from his enormous 8756 score in Budapest and unfazed by fools questioning his greatness.
It’s been a delayed season for Lindon, troubled by an undiagnosed hernia earlier in the year which hampered his opening competition in Götzis (8293). But the season has also been much less cluttered compared to 2022 when, after Götzis, Lindon competed at the World and Commonwealth Championships in quick succession, before rounding out his season in impressive form with a first time 8500+ score in Talence. While it would be much to ask of him to finish the season with another PB, he will be the star of the field, at least on the field.
Off the field, the world champion Pierce LePage from Canada will be in attendance but only in a victory tour, cheerleading and general handyman capacity.
Beyond Lindon, the field is characterised by those with breakthroughs, those on the comeback trail, and those with redemption in mind. The other two men on the podium in 2022 return to Talence, one in the breakthrough category, the other with the potential for redemption.
Germany’s Manuel Eitel earned his place in the German squad for Budapest – a far from easy task with half a dozen men vying for the spot behind Neugebauer and Kaul – with a step up to 8300+ in Götzis in May. Although he only scored 8191 in Budapest, he currently has the edge in terms of both score and ranking ahead of the likes of Felix Wolter, Marcel Meyer, Jannis Wolff, Malik Diakite and Till Steinforth, but they too are improving. So Eitel needs to build on his progress to keep that edge. Eitel finished second at Decastar in 2022.
Risto Lillemets didn’t make it to Budapest despite being close to the rankings, again because of the insane level of competition within Estonia, where all three men in Budapest scored over 8400 this year. That didn’t even include the 2019 world silver medallist, Maicel Uibo. With the Olympics on the horizon, and a few hundred points short of his auto-qualifying countrymen, it is in Lillemets’ interest to collect rankings points, and place himself well should any of the big four find themselves indisposed in the run up to Paris. Lillemets finished third at the competition in 2022.
Talence represents a pot of gold at the end of the season when it comes to rankings. It has the same generous placing points available as for Götzis but offers a much higher chance of finishing on or near the podium. And that will be extremely attractive to the two men who lost out this year because of the qualification system: Ondrej Kopecky of Czech Republic and Makenson Gletty of France.
Kopecky has had an uneven few years since he started working with Roman Šebrle, qualifying for major championships in 2022 with a promising 8300+ performance, but then unable to see those competitions through. That left him as the first man excluded from qualification for Budapest by rankings, so Talence gives him an opportunity to get another good score on his record, ideally with good placing points too.
But while Kopecky has had his fair shot at recent championships, Makenson Gletty has every right to feel hard done by, scoring 8279 at the French champs this year, but being left at home and out of the field due to a highly questionable protected area championships place. Gletty has fire in his belly, and the podium in mind.
Eitel and Gletty have stepped up this year, and the other athletes in the decathlon field who have achieved major milestones in the last few months include the former EU20 champion Jente Hauttekeete of Belgium and Finley Gaio of Switzerland, both of whom exceeded 8000 for the first time in Götzis this year.
Kopecky’s training partner, Vilem Strasky, may be the next man to break 8000 after an impressive year for the 24-year-old. His improvement this year started during the indoors season, and he has been steadily racking up improvements with every competition, and climbing up the rankings as he has done so. Most recently Strasky won the World University Games in Chengdu with a score of 7925. Prior to this year his PB was 7493
The remainder of the field offers a medley of comeback tales.
It includes the latest chapter for Thomas Van der Plaetsen, timed out of qualification for Worlds by the flaws of the ranking system which requires those athletes who might be just short of the inflated qualifying standards to squeeze two scores, in the right location, into their comeback season.
For those rich in talent but prone to injury, such as TVDP, that leaves little room for manoeuvre and despite promising starts in Multistars and Ratingen he simply ran out of time. For TVDP, Talence is now a step on the longer trajectory of Olympic qualification, where he will seek a different outcome to the horrid long jump injury he experienced in Tokyo after a sensational early season.
Basile Rolnin, his full potential still frustratingly untapped and as a result always overlooked and underrated, attempts another return from the injuries that have plagued him since his indoor and outdoor breakthroughs of 2019. Ruben Gado too, returns, last seen at his best in Arona in 2021. And it’s a comeback to decathlon for another of the combined events’ stand-out individual jumpers, as Baptiste Thiery returns for his first decathlon since he breached 8000 points in Munich. Thiery participated in the vault at the World Championships, clearing 5.70m.
Kristjan Rosenberg continues his return from injury, a long haul back up the rankings, but with 7798 to his name behind Johannes Erm at the Estonian championships this summer.
However, if you want to put your money on someone who’s ready to wrap up their comeback season with a breakthrough, don’t overlook USA’s Devon Williams.
He started with 7956 at Multistars, 8026 at the US champs and 8087 at the Thorpe Cup. While the US Olympic decathlon team will be almost as hard to make as the German or Estonian one, this year’s US process has shown that lower scores with good rankings positions can result in selection over those with higher scores in their portfolio. Williams is well on the way to putting himself in a competitive rankings position.
HEPTATHLON
In the heptathlon, the fourth, fifth and seventh placers from Budapest lead the field – Xenia Krizsan, Emma Oosterwegel (who was joint winner of the competition with Ivona Dadic last year) and Sophie Weissenberg, all coming off a strong year.
But they can’t bask too much in their achievements, since they’re going to encounter a trio of athletes seeking redemption.
The US duo of Taliyah Brooks and Annie Kunz have had a tumultuous year so far.
Both logged healthy scores early season – indeed the same score, 6330. Brooks achieved hers to win in Multistars, Kunz to finish 6th in Götzis. Both were unranked ahead of the US trials, so needed not only to finish in the top three, but to land sufficiently high in the rankings to make themselves eligible for selection.
Brooks delivered in Eugene, finishing second to Anna Hall with 6319, but after a strong first day in Budapest she succumbed to her Achilles heel – another no mark, this time in the long jump.
Kunz was in a battle at the US trials with Chari Hawkins, on paper capable of a score some 500 points higher but lost out on the day and missed third spot by a mere four points.
Brooks is now safely in the rankings going into Olympic year, and but Kunz needs to elevate herself significantly to avoid being on the margins of qualification and vulnerable to the movement of others. Both athletes will want a strong performance in light of their bitter disappointments. A US 1-2 is entirely possible.
Switzerland’s Annik Kalin’s disappointment was a little less dramatic than Brooks’ or Kunz’ but bitter nonetheless – having guided herself back into health and fitness to take her spot at the World Championships, she was taken unwell with a virus. A healthy Kalin can easily take on Oosterwegel, Krizsan, Weissenberg and the Americans.
Michelle Atherley of USA and Marijke Esselink of the Netherlands missed out on the world championships, so Talence will act as a season climax for them too.
It’s been a curious year for the traditional women’s combined events, simultaneously experiencing skyscraper scores (Hall, Sulek and Thiam indoors and Hall outdoors) and a lower than usual range of scores around 6200-6400. That caught out many, most notably British Athletics, who picked a threshold for Budapest selection that bore no relation to the state of heptathlon in 2023.
The lull – which comes with the risk of WA misinterpreting it as an inability to fill fields – is due in part to the swathe of athletes who have been injured and missing from the competitive end of competition.
Top of that list is Spain’s Claudia Conte, who broke through in 2021 (in Arona and at the European U23s in Tallinn) and continued to improve into 2022, where she competed in both Eugene and Munich. She’s missed almost an entire year through injury, but Talence will be a very welcome first step back for her.
A few steps further along is Verena Mayr, steadily racking up some solid events this year – such as 6023 in Ratingen – and hopefully not too far from springboarding her way to something closer to her Austrian record of 6591.
Leonie Cambours of France and Georgia Ellenwood of Canada are both well back on the path to their former form, Cambours bouncing back from recent injury with 5939 in Budapest and Ellenwood straddling 6000 in her last two competitions. Britain’s Ellen Barber also hopes to finish her first heptathlon since 2021, when she established herself as a 6000-point heptathlete.
As in the decathlon field, the breakthrough athletes join those on the comeback and those looking for redemption.
Sandrina Sprengel of Germany exceeded 6000 points for the first time last year and went on to take the European U20 title in Jerusalem in August.
Auriana Lazraq-Khlass had a glorious debut in a major championships, the last woman to qualify for Budapest but able to turn that into an utterly joyful display and improvement. Her qualification was a surprise but turned it into one of the most inspiring displays of the championships. She has improved by some 300 points this year, and this will be her first competition in France after that high of Budapest; she can expect the support of the home crowd to mirror that.
There’s a lesson here for World Athletics, who refer to a “degraded field” when lower ranked athletes qualify for championships. If a combined events field in Budapest was degraded by unexpected qualifiers, it sure as hell wasn’t the heptathlon (see previous comments).
Competing with Lazraq-Khlass for the most delightful breakthrough of the season is Isabel Posch of Austria. The Götzis field always includes space for Austrian athletes, and this year Isabel Posch had her opportunity to make her debut. She came into the competition with a PB of 5662 but left with a score of 6021. She then improved further to win the World University Games in Chengdu with 6107.
Celia Perron of France and Yuliya Loban of Ukraine also competed at the World University Games, finishing 5th and 2nd respectively – Loban again incredibly consistent with three scores this year of 6065/6033/6063 – and they complete the 2023 Decastar field.
You can view the full line up here.