Superman Krauchanka takes Decathlon gold (0)

World Junior Championships - Belarus’ Andrei Krauchanka set a fabulous Championships and national Junior record of 8126 points to clinch the Decathlon World Junior title in Grosseto.

After two days of brave efforts on the blue Italian track, the tall 18-year-old from Gomel bettered 8 personal bests to become the second best decathlete in the all-time World junior lists, 271 points off the 20 years old World Junior record of Torsten Voss.

After an opening 11.09 in the 100m - just 2 hundredths of a second off his best time - Krauchanka improved to 7.46m in the Long Jump and 14.51m in the Shot Put. A massive 2.16 metres propelled him in the lead in the overall standing after the High Jump, a position he would no longer lose.

Second behind Uruguay’s Andrés Silva in last year’s Octathlon at the World Youth Championships in Sherbrooke, Canada, Krauchanka set the record as he left the South American a distant fifth with 7542 points, a new Area record.

This year Krauchanka was more in competition with Russia’s Aleksei Sysoyev whose 57.44m throw in the Javelin saw him come as close as 37 points coming into the final event of the Decathlon.

But Krauchanka is a real competitor and with a new personal best time of 4:28.46 in the 1500m he left the Russian almost ten seconds behind.

The fantastic battle saw both representatives of former Soviet Union nations with overall best scores with Sysoyev’s total of 8047 points becoming the new junior record for Russia.

Third overall, Germany’s Norman Müller – whose father is from Mozambique – also set a national junior record with 7942 points as did Pelle Rietveld of the Netherlands in fourth.

The Decathlon being one of the friendliest disciplines in track and field one can be sure that not only will Krauchanka become a fantastic athlete but also that he will make great friends in the course of the years and one day he will probably look back to the group picture he took with his small personal camera after the competition and think back to when he won his first World title in Grosseto.

Grosseto 2004 - results