News30 Dec 2002


2002 - Combined Events Review

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Carolina Klüft (SWE) (© Getty Images)

In the concluding edition of their comprehensive review of the last twelve months of Athletics competition, statisticians A. Lennart Julin and Mirko Jalava give their impressions of the Combined Events in 2002 - the men’s Decathlon and women’s Heptathlon

MEN - Decathlon

Although he didn’t succeed in improving his own world record score which he set last year, Czech Roman Sebrle put together one of the truly all-time great decathlon seasons. In Götzis he scored 8800, winning by 217 points, in Ratingen 8701, winning by 268, and in the European Championships he produced another 8800 total, taking victory by a margin 362 points! That he scored a losing late-season 8417 competition, in no way diminishes Sebrle’s brilliance in 2002. Not surprisingly, Sebrle was recently voted as, not only the best Czech athlete (Track and Field), but also the top Czech sports person (all sports) of the year.  

However, his margin of supremacy also had much to do with the fact that the rest of the 2001 elite group - Tomas Dvorak (CZE), Erki Nool (EST) and Dean Macey (GBR) - due to injuries never reached their best form this year (Macey didn’t compete at all). The decathlon being an event where you have to add up several years of training to reach top class, the loss of some top contenders can’t be instantaneously be compensated for by fresh newcomers.

This situation is well illustrated by the No. 2 on the world list - and the athlete who managed to give Sebrle his only defeat - American Tom Pappas. He is 26 years old and has been around for a few years at the 8400-level, before now moving up a notch - or perhaps two. So for the immediate future there will still probably be the familiar names competing for major medals.

But there are also some good long term prospects around who just like Sebrle and Pappas could develop into real contenders within a couple of years. e.g. Bryan Clay (2nd at US Championships), Finn Jaakko Ojaniemi (5th at European Championships) and Russian Aleksandr Pogorelov (8th at Europeans). They all showed marked improvement this year and are all just 22 (born 1980), so they should have their best years during the second half of this decade.

However, it should be noted that the overall trend of the decathlon if you look at the levels of performance is currently negative, which seems to indicate that the interest in pursuing this event is waning. Decathlon talents seem to opt more and more for focusing on their best individual event, rather than specializing in being a multi-event athlete.

The number of athletes scoring over 8000 points - the world class benchmark - has diminished markedly in recent years. The 23 athletes recorded over this mark in 2002 is the lowest since the current scoring tables were introduced in 1985. The all-time high of 52, happened in 1996, and if you compare to 1998 (also a year without any worldwide championships), the level has gone down by more than 40 percent.

This is an alarming trend for the male decathlon, which of course raises serious concerns for what would happen when (or if?) the current women's heptathlon is replaced by the decathlon.

Decathlon - IAAF WORLD RANKINGS - as of 17 Dec 2002
Position - Name - DOB - Country - Points 

1. Roman ŠEBRLE 74 CZE 1361
2. Lev LOBODIN 69 RUS 1290
3. Tom PAPPAS 76 USA 1270
4. Oleksandr YURKOV 75 UKR 1249
5. Jón Arnar MAGNUSSON 69 ISL 1233
6. Laurent HERNU 76 FRA 1221
7. Jaakko OJANIEMI 80 FIN 1215
8. Mike MACZEY 72 GER 1213
9. Erki NOOL 70 EST 1180
10. Aleksandr POGORELOV 80 RUS 1168 
 

WOMEN - Heptathlon

The Heptathlon was peaking in 1999 and 2000, but with the absence of Eunice Barber (FRA) and Denise Lewis (GBR) and even 2001 Edmonton World Champion Yelena Prokohorova, it seemed that 2002 would be a very low year for the women’s multi-events. Mainly the prediction was right, but fortunately Sweden’s 19-year-old Carolina Klüft came to rescue.

Klüft, who has been a major promise for her country, won the World Junior Championships in 2000, but was unable to better her performances last year. However, her comeback in the final year of her junior career was marvellous.

Klüft started her season with a personal best of 6272 at Riga in the European Cup First League meet, even though her score included some bad individual results for her. In Kingston at the World Junior championships, she finally found her form and scored 6470 points to break Sibylle Thiele’s almost 19-year-old World Junior record of 6465.

The European senior championships in Munich was a much bigger win of course for the young Swede, and another World Junior record of 6542, which was also a clear world senior leader for 2002 and the only performance over 6500 points.

However, overall 2002 was a very bad year for the event as a whole – even the famous Götzis meeting was won with only 6363 points by Shelia Burrell (USA), some 500 points less than is usually needed to win there. During the season there were only 26 athletes over 6000 points, which is also quite low but not totally new. There has been a slump in depth for some years now, as 1996 had 39 athletes over 6000, 1997 - 33, 1998 - 36, 1999 - 27, 2000 - 48 and 2001 - 30. As one can now see, the 2000 Sydney Olympic year of 2000 was a very good one in almost all of the women’s events.

HEPTATHLON - IAAF WORLD RANKINGS - as of 17 Dec 2002
Position - Name - DOB - Country - Points 

1. Carolina KLÜFT 83 SWE 1265
2. Sheila BURRELL 72 USA 1251
2. Sabine BRAUN 65 GER 1251
4. Austra SKUJYTÉ 79 LTU 1218
5. Karin ERTL 74 GER 1201
6. Svetlana SOKOLOVA 81 RUS 1191
7. Kathleen GUTJAHR 75 GER 1189
8. Margaret SIMPSON 82 GHA 1180
9. Sonja KESSELSCHLÄGER 78 GER 1175
10. Larisa TETERYUK-NETSEPORUK 70 EST 1173
 

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