Ashton Eaton of the United States competes in the Men's Shot Put in the Heptathlon during day one - WIC Istanbul (© Getty Images)
Ashton Eaton is the Heptathlon World record holder for a reason!
The American managed to get himself out of semi-disaster after fouling his first attempt and achieving a poor 13.89 in the Shot Put with a comfortable season’s best effort 14.56 worth 763 points.
Interestingly Eaton had thrown 14.45 when breaking the World record last year.
The best throw of the day turned out to be the very first of the whole competition as Oleksiy Kasyanov unleashed a 15.24 effort worth 804 points. After three events, the Ukrainian is solidly in second and although he shaved 41 points off his gap with event-leader Eaton, he still trails 110 points behind the American with 2713 points.
Olympic silver medallist Andrey Kravchenko threw a season’s best 14.90 with his third round effort to add 784 points to his overall score but still trails in fifth overall with 2410 points – more than 400 points off Eaton!
With a total of 2823 points Eaton is going into the next event with the knowledge that he has a huge margin of improvement on the 2.01 clearance he scored when breaking his own World record in Tallin.
Eaton’s personal best in the High Jump stands at 2.11 and this is an event in which he can certainly make up some very precious points.
Laura Arcoleo for the IAAF
