Daley Thompson and Jurgen Hingsen – Los Angeles 1984

“Daley Thompson – A Reluctant Decathlete”

by Rob Leachman

From the “Great Rivalries of Olympic Track and Field” Series

This Series

As Daley Thompsons strode into the discus ring for the last of his three attempts in the event at the Los Angeles Olympics, the defending champion, gold medal favorite, and arguably the best decathlete in history, was on the verge of losing control of the Olympic decathlon he had dominated through the first six of ten events. His chief rival, world record-holder Jurgen Hingsen of West Germany, had on his second discus throw bettered the Olympic decathlon record in the event, a huge 166-9 throw that, depending on how Thompson responded, could thrust the “German Hercules” into the lead.

The decathlon is a unique event in track and field, actually a series of ten individual events spread over two days. In many respects, athletes compete less against each other than against themselves and their best performances. In major competitions like the Olympics, most top decathletes must perform near their best in each event to have a legitimate shot at a medal. And every four years, the gold medalist is deemed, at least unofficially, the “greatest athlete in the world.”

At the Moscow Games four years earlier, that title had gone to Daley Thompson. With a gold medal in Los Angeles, the twenty-six-year-old would become only the second decathlete to win two Olympic gold medals and would solidify his status as the greatest of all time. The likable Thompson lived and breathed training and competing in those ten events and carried himself with a playful arrogance that he had backed up since last losing a decathlon six years earlier. As he offered before the event began, “I’m the best athlete in the world and I know I’m going to win the gold in LA.”

With dashing good looks and an at times goofy demeanor, Jurgen Hingsen lacked his rival’s brashness and bold confidence, but not his talent. The West German had, like Thompson, broken the world record on three occasions. But whereas Thompson thrived and performed best on the biggest stages in track and field, the Olympics, European Championships, and World Championships, Hingsen’s record-setting performances had occurred in lower-key competitions on German soil. And in multiple decathlons against his chief rival, he had, frustratingly, never defeated Daley Thompson. Through the first six events of the 1984 Olympic decathlon, there was no evidence suggesting that on this day, that trend would be reversed.

Through the first event of the second day, the 110-meter hurdles, Daley Thompson’s performance had been stellar, on pace to reclaim the world record Jurgen Hingsen had taken from him just three months earlier. Despite dealing with a nagging knee injury and a sore elbow, Hingsen had battled to remain in the silver medal position. But for the West German to win the gold medal, Daley Thompson would have to falter during the final four events of the competition, something he had not done for the past six years.

As the athletes warmed up for the discus throw, Thompson was clearly in control of the competition, leading Hingsen by 108 points. Of the three remaining events after the discus, the pole vault, javelin, and 1,500-meter run, past competitions suggested that Hingsen had a good chance of outscoring Thompson in all but the pole vault. Despite Hingsen’s size advantage (6-7 and 225 to Thompson’s 6-0 and 203), the British champion had typically outperformed his German counterpart in the discus in head-to-head competitions. With a continued strong performance in this event, Daley Thompson could all but secure his second gold medal . . . and track and field immortality.

Through the first two rounds of the discus, however, the young Brit had not responded well. On the first of his three attempts, Thompson had only reached 124-4, well under his personal best in the event and more than forty feet short of Hingsen’s best toss of the day. The discus is a complicated event, with many variables potentially impacting performances, and decathletes never want to have to depend on the last throw to reach a decent mark. With this in mind, Daley Thompson strode into the circle for his second attempt, spun quickly across the ring, whirled the discus in a low arc, and watched as the implement creased the turf only 135-4 away. Though an improvement of eleven feet over his initial throw, the defending Olympic champion still trailed Jurgen Hingsen by more than thirty feet.

Daley Thompson’s pursuit of a second gold medal and a place in history and Jurgen Hingsen’s quest to finally defeat his nemesis (and win his first Olympic title) had come to a crossroads. And after the West German failed to improve on his third and final throw, the pressure was all on Thompson. The defending champion had entered the discus with a commanding lead over Hingsen in the overall point total. If Thompson was unable to improve on his third throw, Jurgen Hingsen would enter the eighth event leading by sixty-eight points, a massive swing of 176 points.

The greatest competitors in sports relish rather than dread such pressure-packed moments, viewing them as opportunities to test their mettle against the best in their sport. Daley Thompson was such a competitor. And lesser athletes might have approached this last attempt timidly, seeking a safe throw that limited the damage and merely cut into Hingsen’s lead. Again, Daley Thompson was no such athlete. With so much on the line, he confidently entered the circle with a smile on his face, as if he couldn’t wait to face this challenge. Looking out at the landing area, he spit on the discus to improve his grip and then positioned himself at the back of the ring. Spinning aggressively, it was clear there was no timidity or safety to this last attempt; Daley Thompson was going all out to protect the lead, and dominance, he believed he had earned through countless hours of training. He released the implement in a high arc and watched as it landed well beyond his two previous attempts. Realizing what he had accomplished, the effervescent Thompson stood in the middle of the circle, shook his hips to the crowd, and raised his right fist in triumph. Jurgen Hingsen watched in silence, perhaps stunned by the inevitability of what had just occurred.

As Jurgen Hingsen commented after the competition about Thompson’s performance, “Someday I’ll beat him.” He never would.

Daley Thompson, 3rd Discus Attempt, 1984 Olympics

A Precocious Young Talent

If you were to list some of the primary personality traits that described Daley Thompson as a world-class decathlete, you would likely include playful at times to the point of being inappropriate, hyper-focused, driven, and ultra-competitive. Not surprisingly, those same traits could largely describe Thompson as a child.

Born to a Scottish mother and a father who had been born in Nigeria but had spent most of his life in Great Britain, the future Olympic champion was born and raised in the very diverse Notting Hill section of London. Originally named Francis Morgan Thompson, the household included Frank Thompson, Sr., the father, Frank Thompson, Jr., the older brother, and upon his birth in 1958, Francis. As his mother, Lydian, recalled, “When I called out for Frank, all three of them turned around.” In large part because of the confusion from having so many Franks in the home, Frank, Sr. gave young Francis an African name, Ayodele, which means, “Joy enters the house.” In time, the young boy became known as “Dele,” and eventually as “Daley.”

Young Daley was precocious, and challenging, as a child. As his mother reflected, “That child was a terror from the minute he was born. He never cried, but he never slept either.” And the competitiveness that became a hallmark of his stellar athletic career was evident at an early age. As his brother Frank, ten years older than Daley, recalled about his brother’s desire to win, “It was life and death to him . . . He was a fierce competitor—you could see it as soon as he could walk. He always wanted to dominate a situation. I remember watching him in the street. He was always very competitive with his playmates. Small as he was, if they didn’t do what he wanted, they got clumped.”

As Frank continued, he recalled his little brother’s refusal to lose, even when he was losing, including in mundane activities like board games like “Monopoly.” “When Daley thought he was aggrieved, up went the board,” Frank remembered. “Even if I played it straight and was winning, up went the board.”

In time, the young boy became too much for his mother to handle. As she recalled, “. . . by the time he was seven, he was a handful. He was still hyperactive. He didn’t want to go to bed, he didn’t want to do this, he wanted to do that. I couldn’t keep up with him.” The decision was made to send young Daley to boarding school, a private school called Farney Close located around forty miles south of London. Just seven at the time, it was a decision the youngster lamented but one that was a true steppingstone to his becoming a world-class athlete. As Thompson recalled about this time, “Of course, I didn’t want to leave home. Nobody does at seven. But I was a pain in the neck when I was little, because I liked doing what I wanted to, and I was always arguing with my mother. So they sent me to boarding school.” As he reflected on the move being a turning point in his life, Thompson continued, “But it ended up just great. That’s the story of my life. I always seem to fall into shit and come up smellin’ of roses.”

Some of young Daley’s precocious behaviors seemed to continue, but the staff at Farney Close were better able to deal with him and channel his energies in a more productive direction. As one of his teachers described him in his early years at the school, he was “a normal, active, naughty child, always very popular, always very able. You couldn’t help loving him, though you might want to wring his neck now and then, especially when he was having one of his argumentative moods.”

The mission of the Farney Close school was, at least in part, to work with and provide direction to children who had difficulty living at home and attending traditional schools. Whereas young Francis, as he was known at the school, posed challenges his parents struggled to address, the staff at the boarding school were trained to meet the needs of such students. But one asset Farney Close offered that was unheard of in his Notting Hill neighborhood was space, acres of land on which an energetic and precocious child could run and play, in the process allowing a student like Daley Thompson to find and then flaunt his natural talents.

The future decathlete first found his way to the soccer pitch, and by the age of ten, he was playing every evening on the fields at the school and then for three different clubs on the weekends. Those who remembered him in these early years at Farney Close recalled a young athlete who at times appeared a bit lazy. “Everything was so effortless to him,” offered one of his teachers. “The other children would be dead on the games pitch, puffing away, and Francis would just go down there, run around, and he was as fresh at the end as he was at the beginning.” Another staff member recalled his tenacity and intellect on the field. “Physically, he was obviously gifted. But mentally, he had that bit of vital grind, or whatever it is, a mental toughness. He’s got resilience. You could see it on the football field, his using his brains. He had something more than the others. He always found a way to fight his way through, even then.”

The Haywards Heath Harriers and the Essex Beagles

Track and field in Great Britain, like most sports, is conducted through club teams rather than in schools, as they are in the United States. In time, Thompson’s adolescent focus shifted from soccer to track, where he excelled on the local level in the sprints and jumping events. As he explained his introduction to track and field, “I wasn’t much of a troublemaker in school, more an instigator. The headmaster decided it was a good idea if I had more to do. So one summer he took me down to the local club to spend the evenings there. The Haywards Heath Harriers. It turned out all right. I was the best they had, so I stayed.”

On the continuum of athletics clubs, the Harriers were not among the elite, and Thompson in those early years received little effective coaching. Still, against the limited competition at Farney Close and the Sussex area, the young athlete was dominant in the short sprints and the long jump. His form was poor, he didn’t really know how to train, and he relied heavily on his natural talent. But his early success demonstrated the tremendous potential he possessed. As an example, when he was only fourteen and with no competitive experience in track and field beyond occasional schoolboy competitions, he entered an open meet that pitted him against older athletes with much greater experience. In this meet which young teenagers seldom entered, Thompson finished fifth in the shot put, third in the 100- and 200-meter dashes, and cleared 5-7¾ to win the high jump. That he even entered such a meet spoke to his competitiveness and the brash confidence that would become one of his trademarks.

His early success in the sport reinforced his visceral need to win. As he later reflected, “I just had to be first at everything, from catching the bus to finishing my lunch.” This was reinforced by his brother, Frank, who said, “Sport was life and death to Daley.” Playing a key role in nudging young Daley into track and field was a woman who would serve as a powerful force throughout his decathlon career.

When Daley was twelve, his father died. The young student returned to London to be with his mother and siblings, but Lydia Thompson turned to a close friend to assist her through the grieving process. Doreen Rayment had been at the hospital when Daley was born and had accompanied Lydia to Farney Close to watch him play soccer and compete in track meets. When Daley had returned to London each year for summer vacation, she had guided him into various track programs.

By the time he left Farney Close at the age of sixteen, Daley Thompson had gained some notoriety as a sprinter and jumper, doing very well in smaller, regional competitions and gaining great confidence in the process. Then, at the English Schools Championships in July of 1974, he finished fourth in the 200-meter dash, his worst result of the season. Then a few weeks later at the Amateur Athletic Association Junior Championships at the venerable Crystal Palace, he performed poorly in the 100 and high jump and didn’t even make the finals of the 200. It was a big disappointment for the brash young athlete and a blow to his growing ego. After facing challenge after challenge through much of his young life, Daley Thompson was facing a crossroads, his first real test as an athlete. He had just left the boarding school that had been his home for the past decade and was moving back home to live with his mother. Suddenly gone were the school and the Hayward Heath Harriers to compete for and support him in return. It was as if he was homeless athletically, and after such disappointing performances at the AAA Junior Championships, he was ready to leave the sport. Enter Doreen Rayment, or as Daley called her, “Auntie Doreen.”

Rayment was an administrator for an area youth recreation service, and in that role, she had developed a wide array of contacts in the youth sports world. At a time when the young sprinter and jumper was despondingly close to ending his suddenly frustrating career in track and field, Auntie Doreen made an introduction that would ultimately alter the trajectory of his athletic development.

Bob Mortimer was the coach and primary driving force behind the Essex Beagles amateur athletics club. Though not a premier club, and though it utilized facilities that were modest at best, the Essex Beagles would provide Daley Thompson with a sense of belonging and direction when he needed it the most. As Mortimer recalled that first meeting after Thompson had performed so far below his own expectations at the AAA meet, “I was introduced to him and told him how very good he was. But by then, he had finished (at the AAA) and he looked pretty miserable . . . I encouraged Daley that day. He felt like giving up. I said, ‘Come over and see if you like us.’”

When Thompson attended his first practice with the Beagles a week later, Mortimer had him work with the best sprinters on the club. What the coach quickly saw was an athlete with great talent and tremendous potential, but poor technique. He was badly in need of coaching, and under Mortimer’s direction, Daley Thompson flourished. Track and field, spending time training and competing, and developing a cadre of friends on the Essex Beagles squad, became the focus of the young athlete’s life. Other than attending school, Thompson trained . . . hard, and that dedication quickly paid off. In his first year with the club, he came to dominate the sprint events in which he competed. As Dave Baptiste, with Thompson one of the first Black athletes on the Beagles and a close friend and fellow sprinter, recalled, “He just trained harder than I did. He trained a lot harder.”

By 1975, the career path for Daley Thompson seemed clear; he would become a star sprinter for Great Britain. But his coach and increasingly trusted friend, Bob Mortimer, suspected that the young athlete’s greatest potential for success could be found in a completely different direction.

A Budding Decathlete

To suggest that Great Britain in the 1970s was not a powerhouse in the decathlon would be an understatement. By 1975, England had never produced an international champion-level decathlete. Arguably the only truly world-class British athlete in that event had been Peter Gabbett, whose personal best when competing in the early 1970s was over 500 points below the world record at the time. Unlike the sprints, which were highly valued, particularly among young Black athletes like Daley Thompson, the decathlon had virtually no British tradition.

But as Bob Mortimer watched Thompson train and compete in the early years of their relationship, he saw an athlete who could be a good sprinter, but potentially a great decathlete. As Mortimer later boldly recalled, “From the time I first saw Daley, I thought of the decathlon.” As he continued, “He had such potential. He was tall, and he was big . . . But if you’re podgy and fast and big, then you can do things like the shot and discus.”

Mortimer and Thompson had developed a friendship-like rapport by this time. But when the coach broached the subject of training for the decathlon to the young athlete, he resisted; Daley Thompson was a sprinter, something he knew and appreciated, something he was good at. As Mortimer recalled those early discussions, “He wasn’t very enthusiastic. He was very impressed with his own sprint potential, and that was what he liked best.”

Much of Thompson’s reticence resulted from his struggles with some of the events. Early on, he struggled to reach ten meters in the shot put and had difficulty with the release of the discus. As Mortimer described Thompson’s first meet in the pole vault, arguably the most technically challenging event in track and field, “I wouldn’t call what he did vaulting. He scrambled up the pole and threw himself over. The first meet he tried it, he crashed on his back and hurt his bottom.”

But Mortimer kept pushing and Thompson never gave up, and given the combination of perseverance, hard work, and great talent, a breakthrough was nearly inevitable. After countless conversations and much cajoling on the part of Bob Mortimer, Daley Thompson decided to give the decathlon a try. It wasn’t as if he was turning his back on sprinting, and for some time he still considered himself first and foremost a sprinter. But in March of 1975, still only sixteen, Thompson began training with Bruce Longden, at the time the British southern decathlon coach and later a British national coach specializing in the multi-events. In time, Longden would be named to the England Athletics Hall of Fame. Just like Daley Thompson.

Longden quickly realized the potential that young Thompson could bring to the decathlon and considered him a near-perfect combination of talents. As he explained, “You can produce a good thrower, relative to his size and weight. You cannot produce a good sprinter. One must have speed. Daley had speed and he had jumping ability. Those are the keys.”

Thompson eased into decathlon training, traveling to work with Longden on Sundays after working out with the Essex Beagles the rest of the week. He didn’t, however, ease into ten-event competition. For his first decathlon, after only four months of training with Longden, Thompson traveled to an obscure stadium in Cwmbran, Wales. Not only was he an inexperienced decathlete, but he was a young one, too young. British Amateur Athletic Association rules mandated that the minimum age for competing in a decathlon was eighteen. Still only sixteen at the time, Thompson was thirteen months too young. Welsh officials originally ruled that he would be ineligible, but after Longden and Mortimer appealed, those officials agreed to “bend the rules.” It was an open competition, after all, and a novice, sixteen-year-old decathlete was unlikely to impact the results, if he finished at all.

Thompson did finish and he clearly impacted the results of this his first decathlon, though not without some inevitable struggles. The ten events of the decathlon are divided between the two days of the competition, but the manner of that division can skew the early results to the benefit of those with less experience and training. The first day includes the 100 meters, long jump, shot put, high jump, and 400 meters. While each of these events requires some technical skill, they are geared toward athletes with good speed and jumping ability. Like Daley Thompson.

The second day, however, includes four events requiring much more technical skill, including the 110-meter hurdles, discus, pole vault, and javelin, then concludes with the 1,500-meter run. For a novice decathlete, like Thompson, the second day typically poses a much greater challenge.

Thompson had a strong first day as he sprinted 11.0 in the 100, long jumped 22-11, shot put 35-3, high jumped a solid 6-5½, and concluded with 50.2 in the 400 meters. The sixteen-year-old novice ended the first day leading the competition with 3,764 points, raising a few eyebrows among the knowledgeable participants and fans in attendance.

Then came the second day and, predictably after having worked on most of the more challenging events for just a few months, Thompson struggled. He ran a relatively pedestrian 16.8 in the hurdles, reached only 103-1 in the discus, vaulted 9-6¼, and threw the javelin 170-2, but then ran a solid 4:31 in the 1,500. He scored 2,921 points that second day for a total of 6,685 to win his first decathlon.

To put this performance in perspective, his score was 2,000 points better than the previous British record for sixteen-year-olds and was within 200 points of the world age-group record. Historically, as of 1975, the only two-time decathlon Olympic gold medalist was Bob Mathias who won his first Olympic title at the age of seventeen. In his first decathlon and a year younger than the Olympic legend, Thompson scored within 140 points of Mathias’ gold medal score.

The youngster liked that he won, but lacked the knowledge needed to put his performance in any perspective. As a result, he remained lukewarm in his commitment to the decathlon. As he later reflected, “That first one, that was an all-right kind of one. It didn’t seem to be too difficult, but then I had nothing to base it on.” Regarding his second-day performance in Cwmbran, he added, “Boy, I was struggling. Still, after it was over, I knew it was something I could do.”

As Bob Mortimer added regarding the young athlete’s focus on multi-event competition after that first one, “He wasn’t sold on the decathlon. He liked it well enough, and he liked the challenge of it. But he loved running. He saw himself as a sprinter, and he was ever so reluctant to look at himself any other way.”

Thompson’s dedication to the sport of track and field ultimately caused a rift in his family. His mother, Lydia, was very proud of her son, particularly what he had accomplished academically at Farney Close and then at his next school, Hammersmith. But she didn’t have a good understanding, or more accurately appreciation, of the time and energy he was devoting to athletics. She was a single mother with several children still in the home, and Daley was attending school and then devoting his free time almost exclusively to training and competing. She saw little future in her son’s time devoted to athletics, believed he needed to focus on his studies, and wanted him to get a job. As she later explained, “After he’d been home about a year and finished at Hammersmith, I suggested he get a part-time job. He said he was going to be an athlete. He said he couldn’t go to school, work, and train all at once.” A great deal of consternation and multiple heated arguments followed, with neither mother nor son budging from their position.

Finally, she issued an ultimatum to Daley that he either get a job or leave home. From his perspective, if he wanted to reach his potential as a track athlete, which he did, and if he was going to study literature and biology at Crawley College, which he was, then he simply wouldn’t have time to also work at a part-time job. So, he left home, and the relationship between him and his mother was damaged, perhaps irreparably. After this rift, Thompson moved in with Auntie Doreen.

As Thompson later somewhat satirically recounted that confrontation with his mother, he said, “It was my own bloody-mindedness. And she took it well. She said, ‘Get out. Get out of the house.’” For her part, Lydia later further explained her stance, stating, “There were thousands of athletes like him then. The streets were full of them. I felt what he should be doing was working. I had no idea what his potential was or where it would lead. I thought I was doing the right thing. If I was wrong, I’m sorry.”

At the core of this issue, Daley Thompson saw in himself the potential for greatness as an athlete and wanted to give himself the best opportunity to achieve it. It was a vision his mother simply did not share.

He continued to train through the summer of 1975, working with Mortimer and the Beagles three days a week and with Langden on decathlon events every Sunday. Most Saturdays during the summer, he competed in area meets mainly in the sprints and relays as well as occasionally in the throwing and jumping events of the decathlon. And though progress was at times difficult to quantify, he was steadily improving, particularly in throwing events and the pole vault which had been so foreign to him.

At the end of that August, Thompson returned to Cwmbran for the AAA Junior Decathlon Championships. In that meet against virtually no competition, in his second decathlon he scored 7,008 points, a better score than the winner of the senior title. That said a great deal about the state of the decathlon in Great Britain at that time, but it also showed the enormous talent and potential of this new youngster who had burst onto the scene. British track fans and officials were excited about what this now seventeen-year-old was capable of accomplishing in this multi-event competition.

Daley Thompson wasn’t one of them. As Dave Baptiste, a teammate on the Beagles and one of Thompson’s closest friends, recalled, “It was a big problem—a lot of blood and tears were shed about that. He really, really wanted to be a big sprinter . . . He admitted he could be a good sprinter, but said he could be a great decathlete.” So deep was his anguish over this issue that at one time Thompson even discussed quitting the Beagles and joining another track and field club.

Staring Thompson in the face was the prospect of making the British team traveling to the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. The Olympic Trials were less than nine months away, and if he wanted to become a serious contender for a spot on that team, he would need to train longer and harder than he had ever trained before. Given the travel distance from his mother’s home, where he was living at the time, he would need to live with Bruce Longden and train with him full-time. Still, Thompson resisted making such a commitment.

Then, toward the end of the 1975 season in a senior dual meet against France, Thompson scored 7,100 points to set another British junior record. And with that data point, the evidence had become too great to ignore. Daley Thompson was likely not going to the Olympics in the sprint events, but he undoubtedly had the potential to become a world-class decathlete. He moved in with Longden, dedicated himself completely to the decathlon, and never looked back.

To Thompson, there was never a “light bulb” moment when he flipped the switch and became a decathlete. As he reflected, “There never was a conscious decision to leave sprints for the decathlon. I did one, did another, did a third. Then it was time to do the decathlon. It wasn’t that one day I was a sprinter and the next day I was a decathlete. Before I realized it, I was doing it. It just seemed natural, and it’s been that way ever since. It’s me now, and I can’t really remember it being any other way.”

In many respects, Thompson ultimately changed his focus to the decathlon because he felt it gave him the best opportunity to be the best in the event. As he commented in 1979, “If I worked on it, I could maybe get up among the best long jumpers, but I feel the decathlon can give a lot more personal satisfaction because I can get to the very top in it. I doubt very much I could ever jump 29-2½ (Bob Beamon’s epic long jump world record from 1968), but I know I can score 8,617 (Bruce Jenner’s decathlon world record from 1972)—and more.”

“I’m Happiest When I’m With a Couple of My Friends at the Track”

Now a dedicated decathlete, Daley Thompson’s immediate goal was to compete in the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. The challenge inherent in this endeavor was two-fold. First, he had to earn a spot as one of the top three British decathletes. But even if he accomplished this aspect of his goal, and at the beginning of the 1976 season this seemed very doable, there was another, potentially more challenging issue that had to be addressed. After just his third decathlon, his personal best was just over 7,000 points, impressive for a teenager and very good for a British athlete. But the Olympic qualifying standard in 1976, the mark an athlete must have attained to be guaranteed entry into the Olympic event (assuming he was one of the three selected for the British team), was 7,650. In a matter of months, this young athlete had to improve by nearly 600 points, a daunting task for any athlete. His relative newness to the event would likely work in his favor.

And Thompson benefited from his relationship with Bruce Langden, which allowed him to immerse himself in a crash course in the decathlon. As he described his early work with his new coach, “We started off slowly . . . probably four or five days a week. It took a long time to get used to doing it. But then it started to build. Soon we were training every day, Saturdays and Sundays too. And it went really well.”

As an additional benefit of his living in the Langden household, Thompson and his coach could talk about the various events during all waking hours of the day. “We talked about track and field, we talked about the decathlon. We discussed absolutely anything and everything in the history of the event, technique, races that were run and were going to be run. When you’ve got 365 days, you can talk about anything. Everybody’s technique. Everybody’s form. Everything.” And the young decathlete was like a sponge, eager to learn everything about the decathlon and then apply it during long training sessions.

Particularly as he experienced more and more success and gained greater notoriety, Daley Thompson gained a reputation as a jokester and social gadfly, an athlete who befriended everyone and was fun to be around. Much of this reputation was justified, but it didn’t speak to how the young athlete went about training and preparing for major events.

Thompson came to rely on a small cadre of friends as training partners and largely limited his social circle to those individuals. In fact, his entire life came to revolve around training for the decathlon, and he thrived on that routine. As he commented before the 1984 Olympics about his love of training, “There’s nothing I enjoy more in my life . . . I’m happiest when I’m with a couple of my friends at the track.”

Dave Baptiste had been a friend and important training partner during Thompson’s time with the Essex Beagles. That they were both sprinters and were the first two Black athletes to compete for the Beagles may have solidified their relationship. Baptiste quickly saw not only the talent that Thompson brought to the sprints and jumping events, and then to the decathlon. He also saw the work ethic his teammate brought to every workout. As Baptiste reflected, “That was the difference in the early days. He got the work in, realizing he was good, and he was going to be the best. He got it in, no matter what. I didn’t.”

Another of Thompson’s training mates was Clifford Brooks, best known as “Snowy,” who had represented Barbados in the decathlon in the Munich Olympics. At thirty-one when he first met the sixteen-year-old Daley Thompson, Brooks was much later in his career and never exhibited the younger athlete’s talent. Of that first meeting, Brooks recalled, “Somebody said this little sixteen-year-old kid scored 6,685 points. And I said something like, ‘That’s a really good score, Daley. I’ll have to buck my ideas up.’ He turned around and said, “Yep, and next time, I’m taking you.’ Right away, I reckoned this kid was okay.” Though he would become less active in the sport over time, Brooks for some time served as the elder statesman of Daley Thompson’s training cadre.

Perhaps the most famous of Thompson’s training partners gained his greatest notoriety at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics for actions unrelated to his primary event, the discus. Richard Slaney and Daley Thompson met at the Sussex Schools championship meet in 1974 but became friends when both were attending Crawley College. They began working on the shot put and discus and lifting weights together, and Thompson introduced Slaney to Bob Mortimer and the thrower was for a time a member of the Essex Beagles. Their relationship continued after Slaney left the country to attend San Diego State University, working with Thompson when he returned to England on college breaks and when the decathlete traveled to train in Southern California. At 6-8 and 295 lbs., Slaney said of the smaller Thompson (who was 6-1 and 181 lbs. at the time), “And him being little, I used to look after him.”

Slaney eventually broke the British discus record and competed in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, though he didn’t make it out of the qualifying rounds. While he “looked after” Thompson, his greatest claim to fame came from looking after another world-class athlete. By the 1984 Olympics, Richard Slaney and Mary Decker had developed a serious relationship and would be married a few months later. In the infamous 3,000-meter final at the Los Angeles Games, the favored Decker crashed to the infield of the track after tripping on the feet of the barefoot Zola Budd and could not finish the race due to injury. As the medical staff tried to assist the American runner off the track, Slaney arrived on the infield and carried Decker to the interior of the Olympic Stadium. Richard and Mary Slaney remain married to this day.

Of the core of friends/training partners, perhaps the most impactful was an older, fellow decathlete named Panayiotis Zeniou, known as Pan. Five years older than Thompson, Pan Zeniou was born in Cyprus but emigrated to London with his family when he was nine. A good but not great athlete in sports like soccer, cricket, and basketball, Zeniou found his greatest success in track and field, most notably in the multi-events. He was the British national decathlon champion in 1975, the same year Thompson won the junior national title with a score that was higher than Zeniou had scored in winning the senior title.

Of Thompson, Zeniou said, “He overshadowed everything around him. He showed you how inadequate an athlete you were. And that was then. He was just starting. You knew it wouldn’t be long before he was doing that to the whole world.”

Zeniou and Thompson continued to train together for several years, past the point that the older athlete’s career had stopped progressing. Though the relationship was symbiotic, particularly in the early years, Thompson came to rely on his friend for motivation, comic relief, and his dependability. For this reason, he urged Zeniou to continue in the sport even after becoming less and less competitive.

Daley Thompson’s circle of friends and training partners was not large, but it was very tight. These few individuals, arguably better companions than athletes, were pivotal to the great success Thompson would experience.

Montreal Olympics, 1976

In the leadup to the British Olympic qualifying meet in the decathlon in May of 1976, Thompson’s training had gone well. Working with Bruce Langden over the previous winter, he had become much more comfortable with the events that were most new to him, particularly the throwing events and the pole vault. And though there had been no decathlons, there was a steady stream of open competitions in which Thompson performed well.

The qualifying meet was held in Cwmbran, the site of Thompson’s previous three decathlons. Despite his steady improvement, there was not, at least according to Thompson, serious discussion about actually making the Olympic team headed to Montreal. “There was no talk about the Olympics,” he later recalled. “No serious talk. I was a bit young. I hadn’t done many decathlons. I think most people thought I might be a flash in the pan, so there was no need to talk about it. The Olympic qualifying mark, remember, was 600 points more than I’d ever done before.”

Anyone believing that Daley Thompson wasn’t thinking about the Olympics as he lined up for the first event of the British qualifying meet simply doesn’t understand the young athlete’s drive and psychological makeup. Adding 600 points to his best decathlon score in the first competition of the 1976 season was certainly a tall order. However, given the state of the decathlon in Great Britain, any athlete who met the qualifying standard was virtually assured of a spot on the Olympic team.

At the British Olympic Trials, Thompson performed spectacularly. On the first day, he set new decathlon personal bests in four of the five events, the 100, long jump, shot put, and high jump. In those five events, he had scored a masterful 4,092. To meet the Olympic qualifying standard, he needed a second-day total of 3,558 points, 344 more than he had ever scored in his still-young decathlon career.

He started the second day with solid performances in the hurdles and discus, keeping him within striking distance of the pivotal 7,650 points. But then he faltered, vaulting only 12-5 to put him well behind schedule for reaching the Olympic qualifying standard. Then in the javelin, Thompson showed the strategic thought process he would soon utilize to break world records and win gold medals. After reaching 177 feet on his first of three attempts, he started looking forward to the 1,500, realizing that a longer throw would reduce the need to overextend himself in the distance event. As he recalled, “(the 177-foot throw was) not bad, but I wanted more. If I could get a sixty-meter (196-10) throw out, I’d only need to run 4:30 in the 1,500, and if I can help it, I’d prefer not to absolutely kill myself in the 1,500.”

His second throw was a poor one, putting Thompson in a precarious position heading into his third and final attempt in the javelin. He was faced with an absolute need to come up with a good final throw if he was to have any chance of meeting the qualifying standard at the end of the 1,500. As he released the implement and watched it fly down the throwing sector, he began to grin; he had come within ten feet of that sixty-meter mark. Computing quickly, he now knew he had to run 4:25 to reach the qualifying standard.

He was new to the decathlon, and just as new to distance running, and his best thus far had been 4:30.9. But “I knew I could go quite a bit faster if it was called for,” he recalled later. Pan Zeniou was in the decathlon, and his presence helped to alleviate some of the pressure Thompson was feeling. Snowy Brooks was also in the race, and his role was to pace his training mate through the first 800, hopefully putting Thompson in a position to finish under the target time.

The small but vocal crowd was fully aware of what was at stake in the race, and the public address announcer extolled the athletes to maintain the needed strong pace. Thompson finished the 1,500 with a time of 4:20.3. A quick computation confirmed his total for the competition of 7,684 points, thirty-four more than the qualifying standard. Still just seventeen and after only his fifth decathlon, Daley Thompson was going to the Montreal Olympics. He would be the youngest Olympic decathlete since Bob Mathias had won the first of his two gold medals in 1948.

When Thompson walked into the Olympic Stadium in Montreal for the first time, he was still just seventeen; he would turn eighteen on the second day of the decathlon competition. Meeting the qualifying standard at the trials meet had been a significant challenge he had met, but there was no circumstance in which he was a threat to win a medal. But he could watch, inquire, and learn, and he did just that. “I talked to everybody about everything they do,” he recalled. “I picked up their schedules, everything they could tell me. Then I assessed it, to see what might be any good for me. I was like a little bit of blotting paper. I didn’t miss anything.” It was a tremendous learning experience and one that would influence the remainder of his competitive career. “I was like a kid with a new toy. But it was a learning experience I’ll never forget for the rest of my life. I was in total awe of almost all the others there in the decathlon.”

The greatest source of Thompson’s awe in Montreal was Bruce Jenner (now Caitlyn Jenner). In a masterful performance that catapulted the American great into a long media and promotional career, Jenner established decathlon personal bests in seven of the ten events. His 8,617 points broke his own world record by seventy-nine points.

Interacting with Jenner, asking him questions, and watching how he handled himself during the competition had a lasting impression on the young decathlete. “If I were the kind of person to be impressed,” Thompson offered several years later, “Jenner would have impressed me. He looked relaxed and under control, rattling off one personal best after another. But I saw that, well, he wasn’t that talented, physically. He was just a hard worker. I learned that from him, the necessity of it.”

Bruce (Caitlyn) Jenner at 1976 Olympics, Montreal

For Thompson in Montreal, his performance somewhat mirrored the pattern he had developed in his limited decathlon experience. He had a strong first day and entered the second half of the competition, and his eighteenth birthday, in eleventh place with 4,055 points.

Then on the second day, he performed poorly in the hurdles and discus before rebounding with a personal best in the pole vault. He pressed and lost 158 points off his best performance in the javelin before running 4:29.5 in the 1,500. With a total of 7,434 points, the eighteen-year-old British champion finished eighteenth.

Thompson came away from his initial Olympic competition wiser and more aware of what he needed to do to reach his potential. But he didn’t leave Montreal intimidated by the experience or the athletes against whom he had competed. “The only difference between me and them was that my ability hadn’t been developed,” he later reflected. “I never felt that anybody there was so good that they couldn’t be beaten. Nothing there was out of my reach. The only thing was, it was going to take time.” Then projecting how he would develop as a decathlete, he suggested, “I reckoned in four years I could be in the top six in the world, and so I could possibly have a chance for a bronze in Moscow, But in eight years I could win. I reckoned in 1984, with eight years of work, I could win.”

Decathlons, particularly at the Olympic level, are draining, and athletes often take time off to rest and recuperate before resuming intense training, and certainly before competing again. But barely eighteen, Thompson jumped at the chance to compete in a decathlon in Talence, France just a few weeks after returning to England from Montreal. Guy Drut, the Frenchman considered the best high hurdler in the world at the time, had won the gold medal in Montreal to add to the silver he had won four years earlier in Munich. Having conquered the hurdling world, Drut considered himself sufficiently talented and well-rounded to compete against some of the top decathletes in the world. To give him a chance to showcase his talents, organizers organized the meeting in Talence. As Daley Thompson commented, “The whole thing was being run just for Drut. They were treating him like some kind of film star.” Expected to provide Drut with the greatest challenge was a group of Soviet athletes led by Aleksandr Grebenyuk, who had finished ninth in Montreal.

Though he did set a decathlon world record in the hurdles, Guy Drut was largely a non-factor in this decathlon largely created for him and finished fifth in the competition, which was won by Grebenyuk with a European record of 8,486 points. Thompson had a masterful first day, setting personal bests in four of the five events and scoring 4,275. He was within striking distance of the lead and on pace to break 8,000 points.

But then, as was increasingly common for the young athlete in this early stage of his career, he had an uneven second day, throwing poorly in both the discus and javelin. Still, though disappointed, his fourth-place total of 7,905 was a United Kingdom and Commonwealth record.

After an eighteenth-place finish in his first Olympics followed shortly by a fourth-place performance against some of the top athletes in the world just a few weeks later, Daley Thompson was on the precipice of becoming a truly world-class decathlete.

Having spent time with the best decathletes in the world in Montreal and Talence, Thompson applied what he had learned over an intense winter of training leading up to the 1977 season. In many respects, that year would represent his entry into the top echelon of the decathlon world, a season in which his huge potential would become known to the sporting world.

Known as the Hypo-Meeting and initiated in 1975, the annual multi-events carnival in Gotzis, Austria would become known as one of the top annual decathlon competitions in the world. In his first appearance in Gotzis in 1977, Thompson finished third with a new World Junior Record of 7,921.

Then a month later, he traveled to Madrid for a quadrangular meet involving Great Britain, Denmark, Italy, and Spain. Thompson was again outstanding in several events, including a four-inch improvement in his high jump personal best, to win the competition. His score of 8,190 for the first time exceeded the mythical 8,000-point barrier, which at the time had only been surpassed by fifty-two athletes. His point total on that hot June weekend was another World Junior Record and a total that had been exceeded by only fifteen athletes of any age.

Thompson had reached a major milestone but he struggled to put the accomplishment in perspective. As he later offered, “I was performing at a level that people were excited about, but a) I didn’t know 8,000 from 7,000, and b) I still wasn’t doing as well as I thought I could do. I thought it was good, but the important thing was that it was better than the 7,921 that I’d scored before, and that’s all I was ever interested in—doing better.”

It was an attitude that would carry him through two more Olympic cycles; however good he was, whatever success he experienced, he still needed to get even better.

And get better he did, and quickly. But first, he needed to further increase the portion of his daily schedule devoted to training. Through the 1976 and 1977 seasons, Thompson had attended Crawley College, devoting some of each day to attending classes and studying and the remainder of his time to training. He was a decent student and likely could have been high-achieving had he dedicated himself to his studies. But a major reason for his continued school attendance was to eke out whatever educational grants he could to provide some living and training expenses.

In his first year at Crawley, he lived with Bruce Longden, and in the second year, he shared an apartment with some college friends. He ate what and wherever he could, often while traveling to and from training sites, and typically stayed most weekends at Auntie Doreen’s house. As he became one of the top decathletes in the world, and when he began to sense his potential in the event, Thompson started to resent the time he needed to devote to his college coursework. He simply wanted to live and train, and most other activities like studying and attending classes detracted from his top priority.

In 1975, he had applied for assistance from the Sports Aid Foundation of the British Amateur Athletics Board, which was designed to provide training funds for “elite athletes” in Great Britain; he was turned down. “Bruce (Longden) tried to tell them I was going to be good, but they wouldn’t listen.” By 1977, after winning British championships and setting World Junior Decathlon records, he received some small grants, including from the BAAB, that allowed him to focus on training while living a very spartan life.

Daley Thompson’s rise to the top of the decathlon world continued with his 1978 season opener, back at the Hypo-Meeting in Gotzis. He led the competition at the end of the first day before being overtaken by the West German, Guido Kratschmer, the 1976 silver medalist who scored 8,498 points, the fourth-best performance of all time. In finishing second, Thompson scored 8,238 to further increase his personal best by forty-eight points.

His focus for the 1978 season was two-fold, the Commonwealth Games in Edmonton, Canada followed by the European Championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia. These two competitions were pivotal to his development as a champion decathlete. The first thrust him into discussions about medal possibilities in Moscow in 1980 and the second provided him with a motivational lesson about losing that would impact his career for the next decade.

Daley Thompson Interview Before 1978 Commonwealth Games

“I Don’t Want Another Prague”

There was virtually no competition for Thompson in Edmonton; he would win by 844 points, surpassing his training partner, Pan Zeniou, by 1,266 points. Regarding having Zeniou, who was competing for Cyprus, in the competition, Thompson commented, “It was great that Zeni was there. I’ve always found that when I go to a decathlon, I need somebody to chat to, just so it’s like normal, not a big occasion. It has to be as close to normal as possible because that’s when you perform best, when you feel at ease.” In Edmonton in August of 1978, with Pan Zeniou to keep him company and nobody around to push him, Daley Thompson must have felt very much “at ease.”

Rather than another athlete from the British Empire, if Thompson had a target in this meeting, it was Bruce Jenner and his world record from the Montreal Olympics. A comparison of Jenner’s event-by-event gold medal performance with Thompson’s Commonwealth Games decathlon offers valuable perspective of how the now twenty-year-old Brit had progressed, and how much potential was still untapped.

Thompson opened with a 10.50 100-meter dash, a personal best automated time; Jenner had clocked 10.94 two years earlier in setting the world record. In the long jump, Thompson rode a strong wind, well over allowable levels, to 26-7¼, almost three feet farther than Jenner had leaped in calmer conditions in Montreal. Though clearly wind-aided, only one other British athlete, Lynn Davies who won the 1964 Olympic long jump, had ever jumped farther. In the shot put, the young athlete reached 47-4¼, a personal best in the decathlon, but exactly three feet under the gold medalist’s distance.

Jenner had reached 6-8 in the high jump when he set the world record. Thompson showed his youth and inexperience, but huge potential, as he worked his way up to and beyond Jenner’s level of performance. He initially struggled to clear 6-2, a pedestrian height even for the young decathlete. After clearing that opening height, he continued to struggle but still cleared progressive heights. “I tend to forget what I’m doing out there,” he candidly explained afterward. The bar ultimately reached 6-9½, and Thompson looked lethargic on his first two attempts. As he prepared for his last attempt at the height, the crowd came to life and began cheering for the young champion. Thompson responded by clearing the height, though in his jubilation, he nearly knocked the bar off as he raised his arm in triumph. It was a solid performance, though he was disappointed that he couldn’t go higher. In 1976, Jenner had cleared 6-8.

In the final event of the first day, the strong wind that had earlier aided long jump performances served to beat down the decathletes as they ran the 400. Despite the wind, he ran a solid 47.85, a good performance for Thompson given the conditions. Jenner had run 47.51 and didn’t have to deal with such strong wind gusts.

As the decathletes concluded the first day of the Commonwealth Games decathlon, Daley Thompson had a commanding lead over the field with a score of 4,550, putting him an impressive 253 points ahead of Jenner’s world-record pace from Montreal. “But of course, there’s no such thing as ‘pace’ in a decathlon,” he realistically reflected afterward. Acknowledging that his strengths were the sprints and jumps, the foundation of four of the first-day events, he added, “Everyone has his own strengths and weaknesses. Jenner was a good thrower and 1,500 runner. He was always at his best on the second day.”

Thompson performed well on the second day, though his inexperience with the more technical events significantly knocked down his point total. He hit nine of the ten hurdles as he opened with a time of 14.92; “I was ready for 14.6. I was thinking about winning. I should have been thinking about hurdling.” Jenner had clocked 14.84 to open his world record second day. Thompson reached 136-9 in the discus, nearly twenty-eight feet short of Jenner’s mark.

Both Thompson and Jenner cleared 15-9 in the pole vault, though the gold medalist had looked smooth and in control and Thompson appeared tentative and inconsistent. He was still new to the event and added, “I had a broken wrist in December, and this is only the third time I’ve vaulted this year.”

At this point in the competition, to have any shot at the world record, he needed a Herculean effort in the javelin, a strong event for Jenner in which he had thrown 224-9 in Montreal. Thompson reached a new personal best in Edmonton, but his effort was still thirty-nine feet short of the Olympic champion’s mark.

Heading into the final event of the competition, the 1,500, Thompson was in a quandary. To eclipse Jenner’s world record, he would need a time of 4:05.8, nearly fifteen seconds under his previous personal best. He decided not to push it and ran 4:25.78. “I couldn’t do it,” he later explained, “and an all-out effort would only put me close. That would be worse than missing by a lot.” He finished with 8,467 points, the third-best performance in history behind Jenner and Guido Kratschmer of West Germany. With a score that included a wind-aided long jump result, he had fallen a mere 151 points short of the world record, a gap that could have no doubt been shortened had he pushed himself in the 1,500.

As he jogged around the track on a victory lap with his fellow competitors in tow, he looked fresh and ready for more. Regarding the world record, there was a sense in Edmonton that, for Daley Thompson, it was just a matter of time. As he reflected, “There’s not much Jenner can beat me in now. Just the discus and the javelin.”

For the rising star, while the Commonwealth Games had provided no competition outside of chasing the world record of an athlete he wanted to emulate than more anyone else, the European Championships represented the true test of the summer. Held in Prague three weeks after his triumph in Edmonton, to Thompson, “This is the one that counts.”

But when he arrived in the old Czech city, everything felt just a little off. Thompson found the city to be old, dreary, and uninspiring. Whereas the mood in Edmonton had been much more upbeat and light-hearted, he felt the increased tension the moment he arrived at the stadium. “It was really rather oppressive,” he recalled. “Everybody’s a lot more serious than at the Commonwealth Games—there’s a bit more at stake.”

Adding to the change in atmosphere, Thompson felt alone. The twenty-year-old performed best when he was comfortable, and he was most comfortable when he could banter with friends and acquaintances. Pan Zeniou had competed in Edmonton but was not in Prague. As he reflected afterward, “It was a difficult competition for me because I didn’t have anybody to talk to, nobody at all. Nobody there speaks English. There were sixty or seventy of us who had come over, but they weren’t out there when I was . . . I was lonely, and it was cold. It was bloody miserable.”

As was common for the European Championships, the decathlon was slated to be a very competitive event, with the field led by Guido Kratschmer of West Germany, silver medalist in Montreal, and Aleksandr Grebenyuk of the Soviet Union, who had finished ninth in that competition before defeating Thompson in the 1976 Decastar in Talence, France, and Siegfried Stark, an East German athlete who had finished sixth in Montreal. Also in this strong field was a young West German decathlete who was starting to work his way into the upper echelons of the decathlon world, Jurgen Hingsen, who would finish thirteenth.

Despite a strong field, Thompson believed that the only athlete he needed to worry about was Kratschmer. But as both athletes lined up for their heat of the 100, the first event, Guido Kratschmer showed up with heavy bandages on his right leg. At the gun, the West German champion ran only a few strides before stopping in obvious pain. The only athlete in the competition that Thompson considered a legitimate threat would not continue. Thompson finished in 10.69, his fastest legal time. He long jumped 26-¼, the longest legal jump of his decathlon career. He reached 48-2½ in the shot put, yet another personal best. Daley Thompson was on the cusp of a historic performance.

Then it started to rain.

In a high jump competition that took three hours to complete, Thompson cleared 6-8¼, a lower height than he had hoped. In the 400, he ran 47.77, a solid performance given the conditions but again, slower than he had hoped.

Still, he ended the first day with 4,459 points, the best performance of his career outside of the wind-aided mark in Edmonton. He led his closest rival, Grebenyuk of the Soviet Union, by a formidable 288 points.

In 1978, five years before the inaugural IAAF World Championships, the European Championships represented the highest level of competition other than the Olympic Games. In the eyes of many, including some major British newspapers, Daley Thompson was poised to become the first British athlete to win the European title in the decathlon in the forty-four-year history of the event. One of those British newspaper stories quoted Thompson as stating, “This is hard work, not like Edmonton where it was simply fun. But if I can keep it up tomorrow, I reckon the gold medal is mine.”

But of course, decathlons are two-day events, and despite his best efforts, Thompson couldn’t hold his substantial lead over the Soviet. In the first event of the second day, the high hurdles, he hit the second hurdle, nearly fell, and recovered to post a time of 15.28, nearly a half second slower than his time in Edmonton and almost a second slower than Grebenyuk. In the discus, Thompson reached a personal best of 142-8 but still lost further ground.

In the pole vault, Thompson could clear only 13-9½, two feet under his performance in the Commonwealth Games. He actually cleared 14-5¼, but a gust of wind blew his pole into the crossbar, dislodging it from the standards. It was that kind of day for the up-and-coming star.

But Thompson still competed, throwing the javelin 196-2, another personal best but still twenty-six feet short of Grebenyuk’s best of the day. For the first time in the competition, the biggest thus far of his still-young career, Thompson was knocked out of the lead, trailing the Soviet athlete by forty points. To win the gold medal, he needed to defeat Grebenyuk by eight-and-a-half seconds.

Winning by such a margin would have required an enormous effort by Thompson, and he simply wasn’t in a position to push that hard.

Daley Thompson had not come into this competition as the favorite. But when Guido Kratschmer pulled up in the first event, in Thompson’s mind, the young Brit had become the athlete to beat for the European title. And then he had performed so well the previous day, extending his lead to nearly three hundred points. In his mind, he was supposed to win.

Then despite his best efforts, including some PR performances, he had been overtaken by a Soviet athlete, and Thompson realized he was not going to win this important competition. In his still-developing competitive mind, the young athlete had reached a critical crossroads. He wanted to quit.

As he later reflected, “After the javelin, I didn’t want to run anymore, I didn’t want to run the 1,500, because if I wasn’t going to win it, I didn’t really care. I didn’t really want a silver. I certainly didn’t want a bronze . . . I just wanted to go home.”

Then he met Brendan Foster. Foster was a legendary distance runner in the United Kingdom, his third place in the 10,000-meter run the only British medal in track and field in the 1976 Olympics. He was waiting for his event in Prague as Thompson and the other athletes were preparing for the 1,500 to conclude the decathlon. Sensing Thompson’s mindset after nine events, “Big Bren,” as he was known, counseled his younger teammate. As Thompson later recounted the conversation, “He told me something I’ll remember all my life. That is to go home with the silver is better than going home with the bronze; it’s better than third place, or fourth. So if you can’t take the gold, take the silver, because you’ll only feel even worse if you come all this way and have nothing to show for it. So, I got myself together and went out there and ran.”

He knew he had to beat Grebenyuk by eight-and-a-half seconds to win the gold, but the Soviet and all his teammates also knew what was at stake. At the gun, Grebenyuk shot ahead of Thompson while his teammate, Yuriy Kutsenko, did what he could to impede the young Brit, elbowing and blocking him until Thompson could move around him. He ultimately passed Grebenyuk but could only beat him by less than two seconds, six seconds less than he needed to win gold. Thompson’s silver medal, as Brendan Foster had counseled him, was far better than nothing, but it was to the young athlete a devastating blow.

European Championships, Prague, 1978

For a brash young athlete who had faced few real challenges as he had climbed the ranks of the best decathletes in the world, this had been a crushing defeat. In his mind, he was supposed to win, and he had failed. And he took responsibility for the loss. “What was at fault was me,” he later offered. “I just didn’t perform the way I should have. It wasn’t a physical thing—it was mental. I got carried away. Lack of self-control. I was in a hurry.”

As he characteristically held his emotions inside himself, few around him, including some of his closest friends, knew what he was going through. He stayed largely out of sight for a while and then returned to training with a renewed sense of purpose. But in the immediate aftermath of his loss in Prague, he was devastated. As he later reflected, “I don’t know how devastating it was. It’s impossible to put into words. My vocabulary doesn’t have enough words to describe what I was feeling. . . Depressed, abandoned, lost. Worse than that. . . I’ve never considered suicide, so I don’t know for sure, but I think that that’s how people feel.”

In the immediate aftermath, Daley Thompson felt anguish and a sense of failure he had not previously experienced in his young life. Within a few years, he was able to put this painful experience in a more objective perspective. “It was a good learning experience . . .,” he offered. “The value of it is that I’ve learned to prepare myself for whatever comes up . . . I don’t want another Prague.”

In a career that would continue at a high level for more than a decade, there was for Daley Thompson not another “Prague.”

Thompson competed in only one decathlon in 1979, but he was still very active, competing extensively in individual events throughout England. It was similar in some ways to his career before becoming immersed in the decathlon, sprinting in one meet, jumping in the next, and sometimes competing in multiple events in the same meet. And he showed progress as the season progressed. He reached 16-4 in the pole vault, 148-4 in the discus, 203-5 in the javelin, and 50-8 in the shot put, all new personal bests in decathlon events in which he had struggled.

Though he remained very active throughout the season, many questioned his dearth of decathlon competitions in the critical pre-Olympic year. Bruce Longden had previously commented, “We are working on a five-year plan to reach a peak at Moscow next year. Therefore, it is essential that this is a quiet season.” Still, behind the scenes there was some mild disagreement between the athlete and his coach regarding this issue. Longden believed the still relatively inexperienced decathlete would benefit from two decathlons while Thompson didn’t want to do any, believing a focus on the individual events in open competitions would provide sufficient experience. “I didn’t think there was any need to do more,” Thompson offered, “as long as each individual thing was going well. I have enough confidence in my own ability to put it all together.” Coach and athlete compromised and agreed that Thompson would enter one decathlon. Regarding that competition, Longden commented, “. . . that one was nearly a success. But it wasn’t a success.”

That decathlon occurred in July in Flein, Germany just before he turned twenty-one. Reminiscent of some of his past efforts, including the European Championships of the previous year, Thompson performed well before faltering. After an incredible first day that put him in a position to again threaten Jenner’s world record, with personal bests in the 100 and shot put, he began the often problematic second day with a PR in the hurdles and a discus throw that approached his best.

Then came the pole vault. Most track and field athletes travel to a meet with just a bag or two of clothes, shoes, and equipment. Though their baggage is often heavy, even throwers can travel in a fairly streamlined fashion. But for pole vaulters, who must transport to meet locations several poles they have used in training and competition that are fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen feet long. In addition to this being a cumbersome process, poles being lost in transport is not uncommon. And on the way to the meet in Germany, Daley Thompson’s poles got lost.

Every fiberglass pole is unique, from how it bends to the tape the athlete has placed on the pole. In Flein, Thompson borrowed a pole but had virtually no time to become familiar with it. He made the mistake of entering the competition when the bar was at a height, 14-1¼, he would typically clear with ease, but one that would prove challenging with an unfamiliar pole. He failed to clear a height, resulting in no points in one of the ten events. As Thompson commented, “Trying to vault with borrowed poles is close to impossible.”

Against virtually any competition, no points in any event in a decathlon took an athlete out of contention, and in this event, Thompson lost any chance for a decent finish. But perhaps learning a lesson from his Prague experience, Thompson continued in the competition, at least for one additional event. Rallying, he threw a personal best of 203-2 in the javelin before withdrawing prior to starting the 1,500.

He had failed to clear a height in the pole vault and didn’t start the final event, but the result in Flein was tantalizing. He had attained four personal bests in the eight events in which he scored, and track fans could only speculate where decent performances in those other two events might have placed him relative to the world record.

Those decathlon fans didn’t have to wait long to find out.

References

Anderson, Dave, 1984, “Sports of the Times: ‘The Biggest Buzz,’” The New York Times, August 10, 1984

Associated Press, 1978, “Thompson, 20, Achieves 2^nd Best Decathlon Total,” published in The New York Times, August 9, 1978

ESPN, 2012, “The Great Showman’s Royal Display,” July 12, 2012, downloaded from http://en.espn.co.uk

Hendershott, Jon, 1979, “T&FN Interview – Daley Thompson,” Track and Field News, May 1979

Litsky, Frank, 1984, “Thompson Wins His 2^nd Olympic Decathlon,” The New York Times, August 10, 1984

Moore, Kenny, 1978, “Making a Big Splash in Edmonton,” Sports Illustrated, August 21, 1978

Moore, Kenny, 1984, “He’s a Perfect 10,” Sports Illustrated, July 18, 1984

Nelson, Bert, 1984, “Thompson Handles Hingsen Again,” Track and Field News, September 1984

Nelson, Cordner, 1986, Track’s Greatest Champions, Los Altos, California: TAFNews Press, 1986

Rozin, Skip, 1983, Daley Thompson – The Subject is Winning, London: Stanley Paul, 1983

16 Days of Glory, 1985, Bud Greenspan, Director, Cappy Productions, Janus Films

Track and Field News, “World Rankings – Men’s Decathlon,”, downloaded from trackandfieldnews.com

Zarnowski, Frank, 1989, The Decathlon, Champaign, Illinois: Leisure Press