GANNETT NEWS SERVICE MULTIMEDIA                                                                    Olympics home | E-mail feedback

August 24, 2004 8:44 pm

Clay takes decathlon silver

By ELLIOTT DENMAN

Gannett News Service

ATHENS, Greece — Seventy-three points.

By decathlon standards, that’s absolutely minuscule. A run-in with a high hurdle. A fouled long jump. A discus throw centimeters out of the sector. Small matters just like that.

To Bryan Clay, though, 73 points meant the world.

They’re all that separated the Hawaiian from archrival Roman Sebrle of the Czech Republic in the Olympic decathlon that closed out at Olympic Stadium on Tuesday.

Sebrle, the 29-year-old world record-holder, won all the little battles within the bigger battle and took the gold medal — and the title of "world’s greatest athlete" that goes with it, breaking the Olympic record in the process.

Clay, 24, graduate of Honolulu’s Castle High School and California’s Azusa Pacific College, was sensational, setting a career record with a 224-foot, 3-inch javelin throw and totaling 8,820 points, 160 more than he’d ever scored before.

That put him second only to Dan O’Brien (whose 8,891 score in 1992 was a world record when set) on the all-time American list, and skyrocketed him from 18th to sixth all-time on the world charts, which are headed by Sebrle’s 9,026 total in 2002.

But he wasn’t sensational enough.

"I remember watching Carl Lewis at the 1984 Olympics," he said. "That really inspired me."

Now maybe he’ll inspire others.

He banged four or five hurdles in the opening event of the second day program and still got to the finish line in 14.13 seconds. He whirled the discus 164-4, but lost an even longer throw when it landed just out of the sector.

He pole vaulted a solid 16 feet and 3/4 of an inch and then broke away from Kazakhstan’s Dmitry Karpov, a rising 23-year-old talent who’d been a top contender all along, with his 224-3 javelin throw.

Finally, it was simply a matter of running a 4:41.66 1,500 meters to wrap it all up.

Draped in an U.S. flag, he joined his competitors in a one-lap parade that was as much a salute to each other as it was to the crowd that had supported them all for two days.

Clay admits that he was an angry kid growing up.

"I found my way of getting in trouble, but, luckily, I turned it around, and that’s an ongoing process," he said.

Sebrle erased both the previous Olympic record (8,847 by Great Britain’s Daley Thomson in 1984) and the notion that he couldn’t win the big ones — after settling for second behind Estonia’s Erki Nool in the still-controversial Sydney 2000 Olympic decathlon, and behind America’s Tom Pappas at the 2003 World Championships in Paris.

When Pappas, who’d been off to a sub-par start, went out of this one with a foot injury, it gave the competition a whole new outlook.

But it wouldn’t have meant any difference because Sebrle, Clay and third-placer Karpov were in a league all their own.

Just two Olympians (Britain’s Thompson in 1980-84 and America’s Bob Mathias in 1948-52) have won the 10-event challenge twice.

It’s most likely Clay who will stand in the way of Sebrle winning it again in Beijing in 2008.

He concedes height and heft to most of his rivals. But he counters that with oversized supplies of speed and explosiveness.

"Bryan and Dmitry made it very tough for me," said Sebrle.

"And Bryan, I know he is going to get much better. Today, I just wanted the gold."

——

110-meter high hurdles: 14.13 (6th over-all);

Career decathlon best: 13.91

Discus throw: 164-4 (2nd over-all);

Career decathlon best: 170-11.

Pole vault: 16-0 3/4 (8th place)

Career decathlon best: 16-8 3/4.

Javelin throw: (228-8, 2nd place.)

Previous decathlon best: 224-3.

1,500-meter run: 4:41.5 (24th place.)

Career decathlon best: 4:38.93.

Two-day total: 8,820 points.

Previous decathlon best: 8,660 points.

ADVERTISEMENT