Decastar meeting in Talence men’s decathlon and women’s heptathlon preview

Nine heptathletes with a PB over the 6000 points barrier and 12 decathletes who have broken the 8000 points barrier will take part at the Decastar in Talence, the final World Athletics Combined Events Tour Gold. The Decastar takes place at the Pierre Paul Bernard Stadium in Talence near Bordeaux, the venue where Kevin Mayer broke the world record in 2018.

Olympic bronze medallist Emma Oosterwegel from the Netherlands and Commonwealth Games champion Lindon Victor from Grenada will be the top names.

Oosterwegel will be looking to bounce back from the disappointment at the European Championships in Munich, where she fell in the 100 metres hurles. The Dutch athlete finished third at the Olympic Games in Tokyo 2021 with 6590 points and seventh at both editions of the World Championships in Doha 2019 with 6250 points and Eugene 2022 with 6440 points. In Oregon Oosterwegel was 150 points off her PB she set when she won the bronze medal at the Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Oosterwegel will face Austria’s Ivona Dadic and Switzerland’s Geraldine Ruckstuhl. Dadic won the world indoor silver medal in the pentathlon in Birmingham 2018. She will be looking to complete her first heptathlon competition of the season after being disqualified in the 200 metres at the European Championships. The Austrian athlete set her PB of  6552 points in 2018 at the European Championships in Berlin.

Ruckstuhl, who won the European Under 23 title in 2019, will return to Talence, where she set her PB of 6391 points in 2018.

The other athletes with a PB over the 6000 points barrier are Bianca Salming from Sweden, eighth at the European Championships in Munich with 6185 points in 2022, Ashtin Zamzow Maher, NCAA heptathlon champion in 2019, Esther Turpin from France, who set her PB of 6230 points in Goetzis in 2018, Sveva Gerevini from Italy, who finished second at the Multistars in Grosseto with 6011 points and eleventh at the European Championships in Munich with her lifetime best of 6028 points, Ukraine’s Daryna Sloboda (PB 6208 points set in 2018), Dorota Skrivanova from Czech Republic (PB 6073 points).

Men’s decathlon:

Lindon Victor won the gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham last August with 8233 and finished fifth at the World Championships in Eugene with 8474 and second with 8447 at the Hypo Meeting in Goetzis. The Grenadan athlete set the national record of 8539 points in Columbia in 2017 and has scored more than 8300 points in each season since then.

Victor…