Remembering Istanbul – Eaton, a class apart

By the time Ashton Eaton lined up for the opening event of the heptathlon at the World Indoor Championships in Istanbul in March 2012 – a full decade ago now – the great track and field all-rounder from Oregon had already been a world record-holding combined eventer for two years.

Competing for the University of Oregon at the NCAA Indoor Championships in Fayetteville on 12-13 March 2010, he racked up a tally of 6499. That eclipsed Dan O’Brien’s 17-year-old world indoor heptathlon record by 23 points.

At the International Indoor Combined Events Meeting in Tallinn in February 2011, Eaton improved his global mark to 6568.

Entering the third month of the 2012 London Olympic year, however, the two-time world record-breaker had yet to make his mark as a world-beater in the competitive arena.

At the 2011 World Championships in Daegu, Eaton had taken decathlon silver behind his US teammate Trey Hardee.

“I think at the moment I’m better suited to the heptathlon indoors,” was his frank self-appraisal. “It will take me another of couple of years before I’m as good as a decathlete.”

The transition was to come sooner than Eaton thought.

The year of 2012 became a pivotal annus mirabilis for the taekwondo black belt as he started not just to emerge victorious from his battles with the rest of the global elite of combined events, but to do so in peerlessly dominant fashion.

 

‘I knew I could break the world record’

The launch pad was the two days of competition at the Atakoy Athletics Arena in Istanbul, where Bryan Clay’s world indoor heptathlon title was on the line.

In the absence of Clay and Hardee, Eaton carried the hopes of his country as the lone US competitor. Two months past his 24th birthday, he proceeded to perform as a class apart from the rest of the eight-strong field.

Not that he got off to the best of starts.

Eaton was the first man across the line in the opening event, the 60m, finishing 0.08 clear of Oleksiy Kasyanov, the 2009 world decathlon bronze medallist from Ukraine. Having failed to hear the start gun sound, however, his reaction time of 0.277 restricted him to a disappointing 6.79. Had it been 0.150, as it was in the hurdles the next day, his finishing time would have been 6.67.

Still, Eaton channelled his frustration into a combined events world best of 8.16m in the long jump, then followed up with a lifetime best of 14.56m in the shot and a 2.03m leap in the high jump. That gave him an overnight score of 3654, well ahead of his world record intermediate tally of 3578 – and well clear of Kasanyov, who was lying second with 3489.

After opening with a 7.68 win in the 60m hurdles on day two, Eaton cleared 5.20m in the pole vault, then finished with 2:32.77 in the 1000m. All of which added up to 6645, a world record by 77 points – and still top of the all-time list 10 years on.

Eaton had taken his first global title by the unprecedented margin of 574 points, Kasanyov finishing second with 6071. He was the top performer in five of the seven events, ranking third in the other two, high jump and shot put.

“Coming into the competition, I knew I could break the world record,” Eaton confessed in the aftermath. “The competition was solid. Everything was good. I didn’t have any bad events.

“It’s a good beginning to the season. I will now be preparing for the Olympic Trials. Everybody knows how competitive they are in the US.”

Six years into his track and field life as a combined eventer, Eaton was approaching the peak of his powers, driven as much by the quest for perfection in each event (or as near to it as possible, within his exceptional all-round capabilities) as by the world-class level of competition in his homeland.

 

Decathlon Duck and marvellous Marra

As a student at Mountain View High School in Bend, Oregon, he won state titles as a 400m runner (48.99) and long jumper (7.32m) in 2006. His coach, Tate Metcalf, suggested he should consider the decathlon as a college athlete and pointed him towards the strong combined events programme at the University of Oregon.

Initially guided by former decathlete Dan Steele, Eaton made his combined events debut in January 2007, placing second in the heptathlon at the Seattle Indoor Invitational with 5370. He then made a winning start as a decathlete two months later, scoring 6977 at the Jim Click Combined Events Meeting in Tuscon.

In his first outdoor season as a freshman, however, he chose to concentrate on the long jump. He gained selection for the US team for the Pan American Junior Championships in Sao Paulo, finishing 11th in the long jump with 6.85m and striking up a lasting relationship with the Canadian winner of the heptathlon gold medal.

Brianne Theisen followed Eaton to the University of Oregon, where the couple were guided from 2009 onwards by Harry Marra. In 2016 Marra won the Coaching Achievement Award at the World Athletics Awards after both athletes won world indoor titles in Portland and finished on the podium at that year’s Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

In 2012, in the wake of Eaton’s world record-breaking world indoor triumph in Istanbul, Marra’s burgeoning young charge still had to secure qualification for the London Olympics. He did so in style, confirming his mastery of the decathlon and laying claim to be the finest all-round track and field athlete of all time.

The US Trials just happened to take place on Eaton’s home track in Eugene, the legendary Hayward Field, and the familiar environment inspired the proud Oregonian to become only the second decathlete to crack 9000 points. He also propelled himself 13 points past Czech Roman Sebrle’s 11-year-old world record with a tally of 9039.

It was a tour de force of a performance, featuring world decathlon bests in the opening two events: 10.20 in the 100m and 8.23m in the long jump. Despite driving rain, Eaton also clocked 46.70 in the 400m and cleared 5.30m in the pole vault.

 

‘The decathlon… it’s never going to be perfect’

Meeting the world indoor and outdoor combined events world record holder on the eve of his Olympic debut in London six weeks later, it was striking how engagingly grounded and self-effacing he was.

“I think what I did in Eugene has helped me mentally for these Games,” said Eaton. “Some of my marks in Eugene weren’t the best and I did some things that were good. The thing with the decathlon is it’s never going to be perfect.

“That, I think, is the eternal struggle of the mutli events. That’s what attracts most athletes to it. You’re always striving to get 10 perfect events and it just never happens. But, of course, you always work to do that.”

While pushing yourself to the physical limit, he might have added.

Asked what the decathlon world record felt like on his body the day after, Eaton paused for thought, then replied: “I think it would be similar to falling out of a tree and hitting the branches all of the way down.”

Over two days in the British capital, the world record-holder led from the start with an Olympic decathlon best of 10.35 for 100m and an 8.03m long jump. He concentrated on winning rather than pushing to better his world record. His final score of 8869 secured gold by a margin of 198 points over two-time world champion Hardee.

 

Family doubles

There were five more global golds to follow as Eaton proceeded to dominate the combined events world: world outdoor titles in Moscow in 2013 and Beijing in 2015; two more world indoor crowns, in Sopot in 2014 and on home ground in Portland in 2016; and, finally, a second Olympic success in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

There was also a second decathlon world record, with a 9045-point performance at those 2015 World Championships in China, and family doubles along the way. The love of his life became Brianne Theisen-Eaton in 2013 and joined her husband as a world indoor champion in Portland in 2016, and as an Olympic medallist in Rio later the same year, taking heptathlon bronze behind Belgium’s Nafi Thiam and Britain’s Jess Ennis-Hill.

The couple announced their joint retirement in January 2017.

“It’s my time to depart from athletics, to do something new,” said Eaton. “Frankly, there isn’t much more I want to do in sport. I gave the most physically robust years of my life to the discovery and pursuit of my limits in this domain.

“Did I reach them? Truthfully, I’m not sure anyone really does. It seems like we tend to run out of time or will, before we run out of potential. That makes humanity limitless, as far as I’m concerned.

“And I think that’s inspiring.” As is, enduringly, the great all-round Oregon track and field trailblazer himself.

Simon Turnbull for World Athletics Heritage