Sat. Feb 15th, 2025

Hot on the heels of the X-Athletics meeting in Clermont Ferrand last weekend, the next stop on the World Athletics Combined Events tour is the Tallinn Combined Events meeting on Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd February.

First up, the men’s heptathlon.

HEPTATHLON

The World Indoor gold and silver medallists have been splitting their efforts for the indoor season. While World Indoor champion Simon Ehammer of Switzerland headlined the X-Athletics meeting, the World and European Indoor silver medallist Sander Skotheim of Norway is the star name in Tallinn.

With both a European and World Indoor championships taking place this year, the latter the last of the Covid backlog, Kevin Mayer’s European Record of 6479 looks under serious threat next month. Ehammer will be doing the heptathlon in Apeldoorn and long jump in Nanjing, so there will be a new World Indoor champion in 2025.

Sander Skotheim pushed Kevin Mayer hard to the European title in Istanbul in 2023, so much so that the decathlon world record holder admitted he felt stressed, in the long break ahead of the final event, about exactly how fast the young Norwegian was going to run in the 1000. In 2024, the tussle between Ehammer, Skotheim and Johannes Erm in Glasgow was one for the ages. Ehammer’s gold medal score of 6418 was just 61 points behind the European record.

Skotheim’s best score of 6407 came with his silver medal in Glasgow, on that occasion with a solid pole vault of 5.10m. The event has been causing him issues in 2024, most notably during the Olympics in which he no heighted. Skotheim’s decathlon lifetime-best score of 8635 at the European Championships in Rome disguises a best vault of 4.60m. That decathlon score will get much higher.

Tallinn is where we have an early glance into the state of Estonian combined events. The big three – Erm, Karel Tilga and Janek Õiglane – are not competing, but such is the depth of Estonian combined events that we still have a recent European Indoor medallist and a World Indoor fourth placer in the field.

Hans Christian Hausenberg is the enigma of Estonian decathlon. Superbly talented over six events and, like many, hanging on for dear life in the 1000m, HCH qualified for the Belgrade World Indoors in 2022 and finished fourth with a best of 6191.

A decent decathlon still eludes him, with a mere 7490 to his name. But if HCH is in shape, then he is a contender indoors. He won this meet back in 2002 ahead of Risto Lillemets and Taavi Tšernjavski.

Risto Lillemets is perhaps the most consistent among Estonian decathletes, a regular on the Combined Events tour meets and always there or thereabouts. He has been steady around 6000 and 7900-8100 for a few years now, and in 2023 his 6079 took him to a bronze medal behind Mayer and Skotheim in Istanbul.

This will be Taavi Tšernjavski’s final combined event, after years on and off with injury. He placed third at this event back in 2023, and although he’s an 8060 decathlete and 5910 heptathlete at best, it doesn’t matter what he scores this weekend. He is adored in Tallinn and his swan song is going to be enjoyable, no matter what.

Kristjan Rosenberg is the reminder for all of us of what a loss the European Combined Events Cup is to combined events, for it was at the final competition in Lutsk in 2019 that he first scored over 8000 points. At his best, Rosenberg is sub-seven seconds in the 60m, 7.40+ in the long jump, 15m+ in the shot, up with Skotheim at 2.16m in the high jump and a 5m vaulter. But luck has failed him, with injury after injury, and his heptathlon PB is frustratingly still south of 6000 points, which does not reflect his immense talent.

The new Estonian kid on the block is Rasmus Roosleht, a contemporary of Skotheim. Roosleht placed 5th in the European U23s where Skotheim won silver in 2023. With 8010 at that meet he is the most recent Estonian addition to the 8000-point club in the decathlon. Roosleht’s heptathlon PB is well overdue an update – he scored 5671 in 2023 with a 4.24m vault and 5672 with a 4.60m jump, and he has now done 4.90m– so watch out for a big score from RR.

Staying in the Baltic, this is the first senior season for Andris Skadins of Latvia. In the 2023-24 season he set a Latvian U20 heptathlon record, and he finished eighth at the World U20s in Peru last summer. His first score of the year was 5474, including five PBs. Two of them were to be expected with senior implements, but he has also improved his 60m (to 6.99s), long jump (to 7.13m) and pole vault (4.75m).

But who else has come to play in Tallinn and to spoil the Nordic-Baltic party?

Top of the list is Vilem Strasky, the rising star of Czech decathlon. A prolific competitor, Strasky improved meet after meet in 2024. A score of 5934 in Clermont Ferrand, then 5981 in Tallinn where he finished second, and then sixth in Glasgow with 6080. He then went on to score 8016 in Götzis and 8088 in Rome, and 7986 in Ratingen, which would have been more but for cramp in the 1500m. Strasky has no particular standout event but is relentless competent across all seven events indoors, and all ten outdoors.

When Strasky’s coach Roman Sebrle reminisces with old pal Erki Nool this weekend, they may well be discussing the non-Estonian talent Nool has recruited to his troop – a reverse-Petros Kyprianou, one might say.

As well as World Indoor silver medallist Saga Vanninen, Nool is now working with double Asian indoor champion and 2023 Asian decathlon champion Yuma Maruyama. Thanks to an 8021 score in Poland late in the season, Maruyama became Japan’s fourth ever 8000+ decathlete in 2024.

The sole German in Tallinn is Marcel Meyer, who finished fourth behind Markus Rooth, Sander Skotheim and Sven Roosen in Espoo in 2023. He now boasts both a 6000+ and an 8000+ score but has had little luck in Tallinn in previous years, with a combination of injury and no jumps. Time for Meyer to get that record back on track.

And finally, for the international field, we have a new European recruit from Puerto Rico, Yariel Soto. During his NCAA college career, Soto placed sixth at nationals in 2023 with 6047, in the competition where Kyle Garland was 6 points short of Ashton Eaton’s heptathlon world record. Most recently he competed for the University of Arkansas Razorbacks, where compatriot Ayden Owens-Delerme also spent his final college years. Soto has recently moved to Spain to train with former college competitors Bruno Comin and Ollie Thorner (UK).

The heptathlon field is completed by the Estonian contingent Marten Roasto, David Jaanson and Henri Loose.

The meeting will be streamed on the European Athletics website.

Words: Gabby Pieraccini