Leonel Suarez and his 2008 world records (7)

As a well informed decathlete fan you probably know that the world record for the first event in this multi event belongs to Chris Huffins. He has the best time ever in the 100 metres and therefore the best points score. Its also easy to find who has the best score after five.

As a lesser informed, lets say an average informed fan of athletics you surely know that the best points score after ten events belongs to Roman Šebrle, because he simply is the world record holder in decathlon.

But who has the best score ever after7,8 or 9 events? Or the question is who is the world record holder for 9 events in a decathlon? Here is a complete list from 1 to 10 events:

Of course we want to know the reverse list to. Because of the nature of a decathlon contest such a list is even more interesting. Namely to know what sort of “surpassing – manoeuvre” an athlete still can do at the end of the competition.

We all know the reverse score of Dave Jonhson for the last five events (or his phenomenal second day world record) of 4455 points. Its here that Leonel Suarez finds a place on the world record list. The previous WR for the last two events (with the new javelin*) was from Dave Johnson – he threw the javelin 74m58 and made a time of 4 min 27.17 for the 1500 metres equal to 1722 points. Suarez did respectively 70m64 and 4 min 16.70 in Götzis what gave him 899+834=1733 points.

List with the reverse points total starting with events still to come:

*) With the old javelin Georg Werthner did a WR of 1832 points (or resp. 76m96/4min16.41). Surprisingly Werthner did the worst score ever after 8 events (6196) for a performance over 8000 (in 1984 he finished ninth in the Olympics with 8028 p).

In Ratingen Suarez did another world record: an absolute age world record. It means that no one younger did better for scores under the world record of Roman Šebrle. Like his compatriot Yordani Garcia last year he broke an absolute age world record with his score of 8451 in Germany last weekend.

Absolute age world record list:

*) Daley Thompson made a decathlon score of 8470 in 1978 at the age of 20 y 0 m 8 d but it was wind aided. He jumped 8m11 assisted by a wind of +6.3m/sec. Anyway, congratulations to Leonel Suarez.