Word: decathlon
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Just a year ago, Daley Thompson mailed a postcard to Bob Mathias, the only man ever to win two decathlon gold medals (in 1948 and 1952). "I'm going to get you," the card said with the jocular pointedness that is Thompson's singular way. Last week, after the two days and ten events that test for the title of world's greatest athlete, Thompson, 26, the cheeky, irrepressible winner of the 1980 decathlon, had made good on his challenge. He did not make it look easy, but he managed to make it look like...
...catch Mathias, chunky 6-ft. 1-in. Thompson had to clamber over statuesque 6-ft. 6¾-in. Jürgen Hingsen, the "German Hercules" who holds the decathlon world record. In style and personality the two duelists are a classic study in contrasts. Thompson the Dionysian, Hingsen the Apollonian; the fiery fullback and the shining knight. Thompson, an infectious extravert from a working-class neighborhood of London who blithely chatters away whether or not anyone is listening, treats the field of play as though it were an enormous sandbox. Hingsen performs without wasted motion or emotion, intently striking...
...secret lamplighter of Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee President Peter Ueberroth turned out to be two: Gina Hemphill, granddaughter of Jesse Owens, and Rafer Johnson, 1960 decathlon champion. But then all of this summer's 4,200 torchbearers turned out to be remarkable. Winding around and about Southern California these past ten days of the 15,000-km relay, the path traced the same thread that has been tugging at the country since May, a trail of glad tears. George Allen, 62, a football coach of meager perspective who used to say, "Losing is like dying," progressed...
...first trainers told me that the man who wins the medal in the pentathlon is the finest athlete in the world. That has inspired me ever since. My God, the pentathlon is the ultimate competition. Not in any other competition do you find such diversity. The decathlon is all track-and-field-related, but in the pentathlon you're fencing, riding, swimming, running, shooting. Not only does it require power, speed, strategy and the ability to endure pain, but it also requires tremendous mental control. In a sense, the modern pentathlon is the greatest training...
...interrupts another angry man "I 'm pretty sure that it's the final mile of the marathon and the events of the decathlon...