What a strange path to the Olympics it has been. In any other Olympic year, after a brief respite following the major champs of the previous summer, the season is a crescendo of impressive scores, as the best on the planet clamour to be the best in history. For the Games of the 32nd Olympiad,…
Tag: Kevin Mayer
French decathlete Kevin Mayer
European Indoors 2021, Toruń: Review
In the first major championships since the start of the pandemic, the 24 best multieventers in Europe gathered to compete in Toruń in Poland at the European Indoor Championships. In both competitions, the fields were split between experienced athletes and young athletes navigating their first big championships. Over the course of the 3 days, we…
Preview: Euro Indoors 2021 – The Masters v The Youngsters
Once upon a time, in a land far away, there was a boy called Kevin. He was only 19, and he and his friends had a wonderful time running, jumping and throwing over 2 days. Ten years later, Kevin and his friends travelled to another land for a competition…only to find a new band of…
World Tour of Decathlon: 2020 in Review
We expected 2020 to be a race for decathletes to achieve the 8350 Olympic Qualifying mark, or to rank in the top 24 in the world. We expected a World Indoors, a World Juniors and an Olympic Games. But instead, the year was one of ingenuity, with decathlons in apartments, heptathlons on balconies, discus throws…
The March Ten
Pieter Braun welcomed us into March on the Decathletes of Europe Calendar. And what a month it was! Here is the March Ten – the top decathlon-related stories, facts and figures from the month. 1 The Glasgow European Indoor Championships heptathlon was glorious. In the final few minutes one guy ran for the gold. One…
The January Ten
Every month, I’ll share a digest of ten decathlon-related facts, figures and features. Here’s my pick of the best of January – read it quickly because it looks like February is going to be even more fun… 1 2019 started the way 2018 ended with Kevin resplendent and expressing himself 100%. Kevin kicks off the…
The Enigma of Kevin and the Unit of Arthur
To the discerning Decathletes of Europe fan, the Berlin European Championships were all about whether Kevin Mayer would pull out a big score, after teasing us with individual PBs throughout the season so far. A 13.71 hurdles and a 16.51 shot in Paris, and a jaunty 52.38 discus in Germany. He didn’t do Gotzis and…
Le Douleur Exquise
There’s an episode of Sex and The City – bear with me – where Carrie learns that Big is moving to Paris for a year. After an initial hissy fit, Carrie stocks up on French miscellany (mostly a beret and French fries) and decides to accompany Big to Paris, only to find that he is entirely ambivalent…