News26 Aug 2016


Mayer leads fields for Talence

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Kevin Mayer of France in the decathlon long jump (© Getty Images)

Kevin Mayer will compete at the Decastar meeting on 17-18 September and is set to be the headline act at the IAAF Combined Events Challenge meeting following his surprise Olympic silver medal in Rio.

The 24-year-old smashed the French record with 8834 to finish within 59 points of decathlon legend Ashton Eaton in Rio, living up to the promise he showed as a teenager when winning the 2009 world U18 and 2010 world U20 titles.

Having finished second in Gotzis earlier this year, Mayer has now set his sights on ending his 2016 season with his first victory at an IAAF Combined Events Challenge meeting.

Mayer has competed in Talence twice before. He finished fifth in 2012 with a score of 7935 and then returned in 2014 but withdrew after three disciplines.

Off the back of his strong performances in Gotzis and Rio, should Mayer score 7942 or higher in Talence, it would be enough to take the overall Combined Events Challenge title.

He will be joined in the French town by Grenada’s Pan-American Games silver medallist Kurt Felix, who set a PB of 8323 in Rio, and European silver medallist Adam Sebastian Helcelet of the Czech Republic.

In the heptathlon, Hungary’s Gyorgyi Zsivoczky-Farkas will defend her title. The 31-year-old won in Talence last year with 6306, while more recently she finished eighth at the Olympics with a lifetime best of 6442.

Chauntae McMillan set a PB of 6326 at the US Olympic Trials, but in a competition of unprecedented depth for the US, the 28-year-old finished fifth and so missed out on making the US Olympic team. Now in the form of her life, McMillan will be aiming to improve on her fifth-place finish from last year’s Decastar meeting.

Hungary’s European under-23 champion Xenia Krizsan and Germany’s Claudia Rath, a top-five finisher at the past two World Championships, are also in the heptathlon field.

Organisers for the IAAF

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