PARIS, France — The title of "World's Greatest Athlete" is bestowed upon the winners of the heptathlon and decathlon, grueling tests of speed, strength, agility and endurance in track and field.
Competitors earn points for their performance in each discipline and the overall winner is the athlete who scores the most points.
What is the heptathlon?
The heptathlon is made up of seven events over two days.
Day one
- 100-meter hurdles
- High jump
- Shot put
- 200 meters
Day two
- Long jump
- Javelin
- 800 meters
What is the decathlon?
The decathlon is made up of 10 events over two days.
Day one
- 100 meters
- Long jump
- Shot put
- High jump
- 400 meters
Day two
- 110-meter hurdles
- Discus throw
- Pole vault
- Javelin throw
- 1,500 meters
Why do men and women compete in separate events?
At the Olympics, you won't see a men's heptathlon or a women's decathlon.
Only men compete in the 10-event decathlon, while only women compete in the seven-event heptathlon. Both take place over two days and are scored in the same manner. These events are considered the ultimate all-around test of a track and field athlete.
With shorter races and no pole vaulting, the heptathlon typically favors faster athletes, while athletes with more endurance tend to rack up more points in the decathlon.
Before the heptathlon became an Olympic event, women competed in the pentathlon, a five-discipline sport (not to be confused with modern pentathlon). Pentathlon debuted at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo and was replaced by the heptathlon at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.
Some female athletes have called on Olympics organizers to add a women's decathlon event, which already take place at non-Olympic competitions. A movement called Let Women Decathlon led by decathlete Jordan Gray has gathered more than 30,000 petition signatures.
Gray wants the new event added, but Olympic organizers indicated that realistically, if a women's decathlon were to make it to the Olympic stage, it would have to replace the heptathlon, which athletes have pushed back on. Kendell Williams, who competed in the heptathlon in Tokyo, told the New York Times in 2021 that decathlon is "a whole other beast" and that “at the end of a decathlon, it looks like the guys have been massacred."
