Austrian combined events star Ivana Dadic tallied 6325 points in a one-hour heptathlon in Amstetten, Austria, on Thursday (24).

On the first day of the athletics programme at the 2016 Olympic Games, the first event was the heptathlon. The first discipline was, of course, the 100m hurdles. And the first lane on the track in the Estádio Olimpico in Rio de Janeiro was occupied by a Brazilian.

María Vicente loves athletics so much that even the combined events isn’t enough for her.

If being a high performance athlete is all about self-improvement then world heptathlon bronze medallist Verena Preiner unequivocally ticks every box.

With most of the major athletics competitions and series of 2019 having reached their conclusion, we look back at the key moments of the year in each area of the sport.

Damian Warner of Canada and Austrian Verena Preiner, the bronze medallists at the IAAF World Athletics Championships Doha 2019 in the decathlon and heptathlon, respectively, topped the end-of-season standings in the 2019 IAAF Combined Events Challenge.

Propelled by two huge personal best performances, Katarina Johnson-Thompson holds a handy 96-point advantage over her Belgian rival Nafi Thiam after executing the fourth-best first-day heptathlon total in history.

Nafissatou Thiam will start a resounding favourite at the IAAF World Athletics Championships Doha 2019 to join combined events legends Carolina Kluft and Jessica Ennis-Hill as a back-to-back world heptathlon champion.

Multiple world and Olympic decathlon champion Ashton Eaton and 2016 world indoor pentathlon champion Brianne Theisen-Eaton have been named as ambassadors for the IAAF World Athletics Championships Doha 2019.

It has taken Myhaylo Kokhan very little time to get to grips with the U20 6kg hammer.

Vitaliy Zhuk produced a strong second-day performance at the European Combined Events Team Championships on Sunday (7) to win the decathlon at the IAAF Combined Events Challenge meeting with 8237 while Ukraine’s Daryna Sloboda maintained her overnight lead to win the heptathlon with 6165.

Kai Kazmirek charged into day two of the IAAF Combined Events Challenge meeting in Ratingen the same way he left day one: at full speed, towards a second World Championships standard and onwards to an Olympic standard. And in the heptathlon, Verena Preiner led from start to finish to claim Ivona Dadic’s Austrian record.