Leo Neugebauer (© Getty Images)
World champion Leo Neugebauer, recent Götzis Hypomeeting winner Annik Kälin, world indoor gold medallist Sander Skotheim and three-time Olympic champion Nafissatou Thiam will be among the stars in action when the World Athletics Combined Events Tour Gold returns to Ratingen on Saturday and Sunday (27-28 June).
With one of the strongest fields in the event’s history, the Stadtwerke Ratingen Mehrkampf-Meeting offers top-class clashes and a chance for athletes to test their form as they work towards events such as the European Championships in Birmingham in August.
Neugebauer and Skotheim lead the decathlon field, while Kälin heads the heptathlon line-up and Thiam contests select individual events across the weekend.
German record-holder Neugebauer makes his Ratingen debut as the world champion and Olympic silver medallist. It will be his second decathlon within a month following his runner-up finish to Simon Ehammer at the Hypomeeting in Götzis where he scored 8730 – the fifth-best score of his career so far.
His national record of 8961 from 2024 places him sixth on the world all-time list and he scored 8804 to win his world title in Tokyo last year. In Götzis he went close to his PBs in the long jump (7.97m) and high jump (2.06m) and the 26-year-old will want to build on that in Ratingen.
Skotheim, who sits one place below Neugebauer on the all-time list with the Norwegian record of 8909 he set to win in Götzis last year, makes his return after injury.
“After recovering from my injury, I’m fired up to compete again,” the 2025 world indoor heptathlon champion told organisers. “My team and I have trained hard – now it’s time to put what we’ve learned to the test and see what we still need to work on before the European Championships.”
The competition in Ratingen will be his first since the World Championships in Tokyo, where disqualification in the 110m hurdles ended his medal hopes. Earlier in the year he set a European heptathlon record to win the continental title and he then clinched the world indoor crown.
Makenson Gletty of France got European decathlon bronze in 2024, finishing one place behind Skotheim, and they clash again in Ratingen along with Estonia’s Rasmus Roosleht and USA’s Harrison Williams, both also back in action after competing in Götzis. Williams, the Olympic seventh-place finisher, scored 8325 in Götzis, his performances including a PB-equalling 100m of 10.54.
Among those looking to challenge themselves in a strong international field on home soil are Germany’s Moritz Bartko and Leon-Joel Clair, who both finished in the top eight at last year’s European U20 Championships, and two-time national champion Marcel Meyer.
Kälin is back in heptathlon action less than a month on from her world-leading Swiss record in Götzis.
Then contesting her first heptathlon since Götzis the year before, the Olympic fourth-place finisher scored 6726 to win a close contest after a strong second day that included a 200m PB of 23.33. The 26-year-old, who claimed world indoor silver in the individual long jump in 2025, also leapt a wind-aided 6.96m (2.2m/s) in Götzis.
She will go up against Germany’s Sandrina Sprengel and Vanessa Grimm, who will want to impress on home soil.
Sprengel defends her title after winning the 2024 contest. She went on to finish fifth at the World Championships in Tokyo with a PB of 6434 and then competed at the World Indoor Championships in Poland. More recently the 22-year-old finished eighth in that Götzis contest won by Kälin with the second-best score of her career so far – 6328.
Grimm, who finished fourth in last year’s world indoor pentathlon, was two places ahead of Sprengel in Götzis with a PB of 6381, her campaign including individual PBs in the 100m hurdles and 800m.
Three other German athletes in Ratingen – Anna-Elisabeth Ehlers, Marie Dehning and Emma Kaul – have also already surpassed 6000 points this season. They will be joined by national pentathlon champion Serina Riedel, the 2022 world U20 silver medallist who claimed European U23 bronze last year, as she opens her season.
The field also features Poland’s Paulina Ligarska and USA’s Lexie Keller.
Belgium’s Thiam competes for the first time since last year’s World Championships. As well as being a three-time Olympic champion, the 31-year-old has won two world heptathlon titles and her PB of 7013 places her fourth on the world all-time list.
As she did in Ratingen in 2023, Thiam will contest select events.
“I’m really looking forward to competing in Ratingen again,” she told organisers. “The meeting has such a great atmosphere, and I had a lot of fun competing there in 2023. It will be nice to start my season among other heptathletes and to participate in a number of disciplines over the weekend.”
