What Is Olympic Decathlon and How Does it Work?

The Paris 2024 decathlon consists of ten track and field events taking place over two days at the Stade de France. It’s considered by many to be the pinnacle of individual sporting achievement and pushes mind and body to their absolute limits. But what is Olympic decathlon?

In fact it’s a story that can be traced back over 2,700 years to the ancient Greek Olympic Games. Sit back, relax and put your feet up, here is your Olympics decathlon guide.

From the Greek deka meaning ‘ten’ and athlon translating to ‘contest’ or ‘prize’, the ten-event decathlon started life as the five-event pentathlon which is believed to have made its debut at the 18th Olympiad around 708 BC. The event took place in a single day and consisted of the following –

Long Jump: But not as we’d recognise today. The competitor used weights known as halteres to propel him from a standing start and it may have consisted of around five separate leaps, given that records suggest jumps of around fifteen metres. Five attempts were permitted and the longest was recorded.

Javelin: This was split into two sections, one for distance (ekebolon) and another for accuracy (stochastikon). The javelin – a lighter example of an ancient Greek war spear – had a leather strap attached used as a handle for launching, and competitors were also given five attempts.

Discus: Competitors threw a four-kilogram solid bronze disc from a raised platform and again, from five attempts, the longest was recorded.

Stadion: The stadion was a running race over a distance of approximately 180 metres and, as it is today, the winner was the first across the line.

Wrestling: Again the rules are similar to today’s bouts where the winner wrestled his opponent to the ground. The wrestling – always the last event of the five – took place in a sandpit outside the Temple of Zeus.

It’s not known for certain but it’s likely the ancient Olympic Games came to an end in the late fourth or early fifth century AD (it’s believed the spectacle was officially banned by Emperor Theodosius II in 393 AD, but some sources suggest it carried on for a few more years), and the world had to wait 1,500 years for the next one.

The first of the ‘modern’ Olympic Games was held in Athens in 1896, but there was a further wait of sixteen years to see the return of the decathlon at the Olympics.

The decathlon first appeared in the athletics program at the Olympic Games in 1912 in Stockholm. The first gold medallist was American Jim Thorpe, who also took the gold in the classic pentathlon. He was an astonishing athlete who played professional American Football and baseball, and was voted the greatest American athlete of the first half of the twentieth century.

Decathlon at the Olympics has appeared at every Games since 1912 and the current Olympic record holder is Canadian Damian Warner with 9,018 points, who took top spot at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. It’s a score we’ll attempt to explain below.

The decathlon takes place over two consecutive days and the events are as follows –

• Day 1: 100 Metres | Long Jump | Shot Put | High Jump | 400 Metres
• Day 2: 110 Metre Hurdles | Discus | Pole Vault | Javelin | 1500 Metres

Here comes the tricky bit, the scoring. Fundamentally, the athlete who scores the highest number of points is the winner, and each athlete gains points depending on their performance in each of the ten events. However, the points system is incredibly complex and sometimes not even the athletes themselves understand how the system works!

The way points are scored is based on complicated mathematical algorithms that give the athletes a predetermined amount of points according to a set of performance parameters for every event.

And the scoring isn’t made any easier on the basis that four events are scored the highest by recording the lowest – or fastest – time (100m, 400m, 110m hurdles, 1,500m), another four are based on length (long jump, discus, javelin and shot put) and the last two are based on height (pole vault and high jump).

The points system was developed in 1912 when the Olympic rules for decathlon were codified, but over the last century the system has been constantly tinkered with in an attempt to make it absolutely fair for everyone taking part. Even now there remain question marks about the scoring system’s suitability.

The rules for the events in the decathlon at the Olympics are the same for each individual discipline. In the track events, the athletes are allowed a single false start, a second results in disqualification from that event. In the field events, the athletes get three attempts.

After all ten events have been completed, the athlete with the most points is the winner. In the event of a tie, the competitor with the most points in the majority of the events wins.

At the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, legendary British decathlete Daley Thompson missed the Olympic world record by a single point. However in 1985, the points system was revised and retrospectively raised Thompson’s score, handing him the world record a year late!

At the Olympic Games, decathlon competitors are often considered as being at the zenith of sporting excellence. Only three athletes in the history of the event have won back-to-back gold medals – Bob Mathias (London 1948 and Helsinki 1952), Daley Thompson (Moscow 1980 and LA 1984), and Ashton Eaton (London 2012 and Rio 2016).

When Jim Thorpe was presented with his gold medal by Sweden’s King Gustav V in 1912, he said ‘Sir, you are the world’s greatest athlete’, and from then on, the decathlon winner has that epithet bestowed upon him.

We hope you enjoyed reading this Olympics decathlon guide and don’t forget, you can catch all the action from Paris 2024 on discovery+!