The 2008 Ratingen decathlon was won by Cuba’s Leonel Suárez with 8451 points, ahead of Germany’s Arthur Abele (8372) and Andre Niklaus (8273), in a high-quality competition featuring multiple athletes over the 8200-point mark.
Leonel Suarez won an Olympic bronze medal twice: at the Beijing Olympic Games (2008) and at the London Olympic Games (2012). He holds Cuban national record for the decathlon with 8654 points. Winner of the 2011 IAAF Combined Events Challenge.
Eugene Martineau was a two-time Olympic decathlete from the Netherlands, a national champion, and a consistent world-class performer with a career best over 8200 points.
Andres Raja represented Estonia in the decathlon at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, finishing 12th with 8118 points, but he went just one point higher to set his personal best of 8119 at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin. He was a four
Mikk Pahapill won heptathlon gold at the 2009 European Indoor Championships with 6362 points — remarkably he established personal bests in all seven disciplines.
Jan Felix Knobel won the men’s decathlon at the 2008 IAAF World Junior Championships in Bydgoszcz with 7896 points, claiming the U20 world title by just two points ahead of Eduard Mikhan, with Mihail Dudaš taking bronze.
Yordani Garcia claimed numerous regional titles and competed in three Olympic Games. In all three of his Olympic appearances (2008, 2012, 2016), he finished just shy of the 8000 ‐point mark. That’s unusually consistent ‐ and a
Michael Schrader won the silver medal at the World Championships in Moscow 2013, becoming the first German decathlete to make it to the podium at the World Championships since Frank Busemann took the bronze medal in Athens 1997.
Bulgarian men’s decathlon had its glory days and its great heroes. But those proud traditions were lost somewhere in the past. Who knows – maybe one day a new prodigy will emerge to revive what has been long forgotten.
The discipline and training applied by decathletes have always been regarded by me as the ultimate in athletic dedication. Whilst it is of course always a huge honour for any decathlete to achieve the ultimate status of World Champion, I cannot help but regard all those who dedicate themselves to this most gruelling of athletic disciplines as Champions - unknown person