A decathalon is a sporting event. It has ten track and field events. It consists of 4 runs, 3 jumps and 3 throws
The word decathalon comes from the Greek language. It has two parts; δέκα (déka, meaning "ten") and ἄθλος (áthlos, or ἄθλον, áthlon, meaning "feat").
As a pentathlon, the all-around was part of the Olympic Games of antiquity, but was not yet practiced in the formative period of modern athletics, from about 1860. At the Olympic Games in 1904 an all-around decathlon took place. The sequence of disciplines was already very similar to today's decathlon, which was introduced at the Olympic Games in 1912.
The selection of disciplines and the order has remained unchanged since then.
The first decathlons according to these rules were held in 1911. On October 15, a decathlon with three participants took place as a test for the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, which was held on one day. At the same time, the 1st decathlon championship of the German Athletics Department (DSBfA; forerunner of the German Athletics Association) took place in Münster. The winner in Münster was Karl Halt (5060 points).
The first Olympic decathlon in 1912 was split over three days due to the large number of participants.
The overall result of a decathlon is determined according to the scoring table. The scoring table has been changed several times; there are tables from 1912, 1920, 1936, 1952, 1964 and 1985. In the process, the weighting of the individual disciplines was also changed, so that in the statistics earlier best performances often result in a higher score than later performances when converted later.
Several decathletes of the early days later became well-known as sports officials: Avery Brundage (1887-1975), later president of the International Olympic Committee, competed in the decathlon at the 1912 Olympics (abandoned) and finished sixth in the pentathlon. The 1912 Olympic eighth in the decathlon, Karl Halt (later Karl Ritter von Halt; 1891-1964), became Reichssportführer under National Socialism and was later president of the National Olympic Committee in the Federal Republic.
The decathlon is one of the last two men's disciplines (along with 110-meter hurdles) not held for women at international highlights (as of 2018); instead of the decathlon, there is a heptathlon for women. Women's decathlons have been held since 2004, and World Athletics registers decathlon world records for women.
The most famous all-around event of the season is the Götzis all-around meeting at the end of May/beginning of June. Three world records were set here, in 1980 and 1982 by the Briton Daley Thompson and in 2001 by the Czech Roman Šebrle. In the world best list of the 50 best decathletes there are twelve results from Götzis (as of June 2012).
Since the beginning of the 1990s, so-called all-man decathlons have been held. They follow the normal structure of a decathlon, but deviate from it by some facilitations, such as lower hurdles and lower initial heights for the jumps, and usually offer on the part of the organizer a supervision and guidance that allows even beginners to participate successfully.
(in brackets: converted number of points according to the table valid since 1985)
