Dan O’Brien won an Olympic gold medal at the Atlanta Olympic Games (1996). He is triple decathlon World champion (1991, 1993, 1995) and a former World Record holder (8891 points scored in Talence 1992).
Steve Fritz missed an Olympic medal by 20 points in Atlanta (1996). He had finished the best competition of his life, scoring 8644 points. That got him 4th place.
Roman Šebrle became the first decathlete ever to achieve over 9000 points, setting the World Record at 9026 points (Götzis 2001), succeeding his compatriot, Tomaš Dvorak, who had scored 8994 points two years earlier (Prague 1999).