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Götzis 2008 – decathletes prepare for Beijing (3)

Things can go wrong.
Where do I start? Preparing statistics etc the days before Götzis, my pc at home crashed.
On Friday (the day before the decathlon) I was sick and on Saturday it was my laptop.
A virus in both cases?
So after a whole day of driving home – say a nine hundred km’s, I’m sitting here trying to tell my story.

Some said the edition 2008 in Austria wouldn’t be interesting.
Sebrle injured, Clay takes no risks before the trials, Krauchanka sick, Gourmet hamstring problem.
Yes, but real fans from all over Europe came to Götzis again.
Why? Decathlon meetings are unpredictable and there where athletes of very high level!

Sometimes decathletes do their best ever heptathlon in the winter, followed by their best decathlon in the summer (or very close to it). Compare for example Sebrle in 2001 and in 2004, or Clay in 2004, or Karpov in 2004!
I asked myself what will Dmitriy Karpov or Aleksey Sysoyev do, because they both broke their personal record this winter in heptatlon with a serious amount of points. An indication of what we can expect this summer season?
Is Pogorelov back and what progress will the others like Pascal or the Cubans show, who don’t specialize themselves in heptathlon, one year later!

Saturday morning between 11:30 and 11:50, four 100m races. Although the wind was only ones favourable (+0.6) relatively good times where run, but now one did a personal best. Jacob Minah leads with 10.78.
Long Jump at 12:40.
Drozdov knew from performances in training that he could do 7m70. In his second jump he was able to translate his training performance into action. A 1005 points jump of 7m78 gave him the lead in the long jump and the overall standings.
The specialists in the stadium (among the fans) speculated already about him as a prominent medal candidate but Drozdov couldn’t really benefit from this extraordinary performance in the next events.
In the shot put, five athletes produced a personal best, with Pascal Behrenbruch as winner.
Throwing the shot (in fact pushing it away) 16m58 he moved from 15th to 6th place.
The other pb’s are Pogorelov: 16m54; Karpov: 16m49; Minah: 14m26; Suarez 13m89.
Behrenbruch and Pogorelov are two new names now in the all time shot put top ten from the Götzis hypo meeting (resp. 7th and 8th ).
Only one person – Pascal Behrenbruch - did a pb in the high jump 2m03 or 1cm better than his previous best. The shortest guy was Suarez. With a length of about 1m82 he has a pb of 2m17!
The competition stopped when he and three other athletes managed to do 2m09.
Allmost 18:10 in the evening and no one went under 48 seconds for the 400m. Only Suarez had a personal best (of 48.37).
Behrenbruch is the only one doing a first day personal record of 4229 p.

Karpov leads after day one with 4382 and 67 points ahead of the second. Not really his highest points total for a first day but he starts the next day with one of the highest scores ever in decathlon history for the first three events on day two (110H/DT/PV).
His total after eight events (7213) has only been don better by twelve athletes including himself.
The javelin throw brought a little bit of a anticlimax for Karpov because he threw only 50m62.
The javelin is the weaker part of Dmitriy and he said he would make hard work of it this summer to get better results, closer to his personal best of 60m31.
Meanwhile Sysoyev was doing one pb after another: 54.08 in the discus (previous best:53.49), 5.10 in the pole vault (previous:4.90) and 64.22 javelin (previous: 59.60)
Intermediate result after nine: Karpov 7811, Sysoyev 7809 or a difference of two points!
Although Sysoyev was the better runner on paper it was obvious Karpov would attempt a tactical race running behind his rival and do an effort in the last hundred metres, what brought him victory.
Sysoyev had a second-day-record of 4281 points as well as Pogorelov (4076) who became third.
Only Roman Sebrle and Erki Nool have ever don a better second day in Götzis to give Sysoyev the third place ever on the hypo meeting.

Fourth we have Suarez, with a new Cuban record of 8366 points! Smith was fifth with a good decathlon of 8332 points (his third best score ever). Especially his second day was good according to his standards. Only Smith’s second day in Osaka has been better.
From the German team it seems to be only Pascal Behrenbruch that qualifies for the Olympics with a personal best total of 8242 points.
Number seven, eight and nine where the rest of the eight thousand plus performers. Abele (7) did 8220 closing his decathlon with a very good performance (4 min 15.77 sec) and a 6th place in the all-time list of the hypo-meeting. Drozdov became eight (8208) and Martineau (nine) broke his personal best total (8161).
From the guys below eight thousand Nicklas Wiberg and David Gervasi each did a personal best total points score resp. of 7917 and 7755 points.
One of the most beautiful things that the public has seen on day two was when Abele and Sysoyev synchronized unwillingly with almost perfect timing the exact moment they both went over their personal record height in the pole vault!
If this was "training" for the Olympics, we hope to see firework in Beijing.

Comments (3)

Wolfgang Röttsches wrote on June 04, 2008
Thank you Chris - we come back every year to Götzis!
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Adrian Krebs wrote on June 05, 2008
may be the "big ones" weren't there... but i saw a lot of great athlets and fascinating duels - on heptathlon and decathlon!

and the best swiss-fan-crew ever

See you next year!
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Jacob Vandendriessche wrote on June 10, 2008
Well done Chris, even after a lesser friday.
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