TOKYO: Germany’s Leo Neugebauer stepped up from his Paris Olympic silver to take the world championship decathlon gold on Sunday, as a huge javelin personal best set him up for a 1,500 metres that he paced perfectly.
The German’s previous best javelin was 58.99 metres but he extended that to a scarcely believable 64.34 to leapfrog long-time leader Kyle Garland.
Puerto Rico’s Ayden Owens-Delerme took silver and American Garland the bronze.
Garland had a solid start with the fifth-fastest 110 hurdles as Owens-Delerme clocked the best time of the day with 13.65 seconds.
Neugebauer had a poor hurdles but gained considerable ground with the discus, where his decathlon championship record throw of 56.15 metres was almost four metres better than anyone else in the field and eight metres ahead of Garland.
He followed up with a 5.10 metre pole vault, which Owens-Delerme matched for a personal best, and with Garland clearing only 4.80, things closed up
Neugebauer then had a dream javelin, throwing a personal best 61.00 metres and improving it to 64.34 to move to the top of the standings by a slender 15 points from Garland.
However, with a 1,500m personal best far superior to the American’s he just needed to avoid disaster in the final event to take the gold.
On a sodden track, Owens-Delerme did all he could with a run of four minutes 17.91 seconds but Neugebauer showed terrific patience to clock a personal best 4:31.89 which was enough for gold.
Neugebauer ended with 8,804 points to the 8,784 of Owens-Deleme. Garland held on for third on 8,703.
The day began with Norway’s gold medal favourite Sander Skotheim suffering more heartbreak when he was disqualified from his 110 metres hurdles heat.
Skotheim, who went out of the Olympics last year after three no-heights in the pole vault, was in second place overnight, but with his strong second day had been expected to push on for the title.
He caught a hurdle, however, and pushed over the next to departed the competition.
Last year, Skotheim won a fair play award after opting to remain in the Paris competition, despite his pole vault travails, to pace fellow Norwegian Markus Rooth through the final 1,500m en route to his gold.
Rooth missed Tokyo through injury. – Reuters
© New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd
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