Daley Thompson is considered by many to be the greatest Olympic decathlete of all time. Thompson won the decathlon gold in the 1980 and 1984 Olympics, and was world record holder in the event four different times.
The Briton had a relatively easy path to the gold in Moscow in 1980, winning comfortably over Yuriy Kutsenko of the USSR. It was a different story, though, in Los Angeles four years later, as Thompson encountered stiff competition from West Germany’s Jurgen Hingsen. Through seven events only a few points separated both athletes until Thompson secured the gold with strong efforts in the pole vault and javelin.
He missed out on an Olympic record by clocking .02 of a second too slow in the last event, the 1500m, but years later the IAAF ruled that his time in the 110m hurdles was off by a hundredths of a second and he was awarded an extra point which gave him a belated world record. Thompson would compete again in Seoul in 1988, but only managed a fourth-place finish.
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