"You, sir, are the world's greatest athlete!" exclaimed King Gustav V of Sweden in 1912 at the sixth Olympic Games in Stockholm. Gustav was referring to the gold medal performance just turned in by the USA's Jim Thorpe, the winner of the first Olympic decathlon.
Four Pea Ridge athletes will joining large fields in pursuit of similar athletic glory at the Arkansas State High School Decathlon/Pentathlon Championships with competition beginning today in Cabot. Vanessa Wing and Ashtyn Mondy will compete for the girls with Robby Pickthal and Trevor Henry joining the fray for the boys.
There are 92 girls and 88 boys listed as starters for the two-day competition that combines athletes from all seven high school classifications.
Girls head coach Heather Wade is confident her two athletes will do well in the seven-event, two-day heptathlon.
"Vanessa will be doing this for the second time with Ashtyn getting into it for the first time." Both seniors, the two athletes have been big parts of the incredibly successful track seasons the Lady Blackhawks have experienced over the past three years.
Wing was 34th overall in last year's meet while finishing eighth best among 4A competitiors. Wing will be the fourth best returning athlete from last season among 4A athletes and is also among the top 25 overall returning from 2015.
The pentathlon is for girl athletes and consists of four field events (shot put, long jump, discus, and high jump) and three running events (100 hurdles, 200 dash and 800 run). Points will be awarded to each athlete in each event based on the marks achieved. There are no points awarded for what place you might come in competing in the separate events.
The last event on the schedule for the girls will be the 800 meter run. Competing for two days in a likely humid and hot environment in central Arkansas, with the last event being the most physically demanding, gives credence to the notion that the winner has a claim to "best athlete" status.
The shot put event measures sheer strength, while the discus combines strength with athleticism. The high and long jumps will test speed and skill with the vertical jump demanding a high degree of athleticism.
Hurdling requires mastery of technique and mechanics while performing at a high speed with the 200 being the longest all out sprint. When they line up for that final event, they will be battling fatigue and the elements in probably the hottest part of the day.
I've had experience coaching athletes in the AAU multi-event track competitions in the summer, having had several win state and multi-state gold medals. In every case, it came down to the final event to finally sort things out.
An athlete can actually win all but one of the events and still not win the overall title. Back in the late '90s, I was coaching a Little Rock athlete in a four-state regional. The young man was doing well but could not beat the top St. Louis performer in any event up until the last one. Donovan (my athlete) had been training hard for that last long run in what amounted to a test of courage and was looking forward to making his move to the top.
The other athlete had the mistaken notion that because he had "won" all the previous events that he had put together an unbeatable lead. This false idea led the St. Louis lad to jog the final event while my guy set a personal best. Donovan ended up outscoring the overall leader by almost 700 points in the last event, enough to wipe out the 500 point deficit.
Personally, I once competed in a decathlon myself in Springfield, Mo., when I was 30. All the other competitors were runners and in fairly good condition, at least better condition than I was, and I finished nearly last in all the races. However, none of them had a clue about field events while I had a fair amount of expertise in that area. To my surprise, the large margins I won the throwing events by, erased the deficit I had built up in the running events, and I wound up with the gold medal.
I learned then, that to be successful in a multiple event competition, you just have to be competitive in most of the events, while scoring heavily in a few events. It takes a bad performance in just one event to sink your chances at success.
The favored athlete in this years girls competition is Asia Anderson of Little Rock Robinson. Anderson is a junior trackster who was the high point athlete in the state 4A meet two weeks ago. Her dad, Gary Anderson, is a former NFL star and she is the youngest in a family of track and field superstars. I remember Anderson from 10 years ago when she was competing for a summer track club when she was about 6 years old herself.
About Jim Thorpe
Jim Thorpe was a Sac and Fox Indian born in 1888 near where my parents would be raised near Shawnee, Okla. Even though his exploits were recorded in the earliest part of the 20th century, his name seemingly always comes out on top when discussions turn to who the greatest American athlete was. In a national poll not too many years ago, he was again affirmed as the Greatest Athlete ever and for a fact, his story is one that would be hard to replicate.
While always asserting that football was his favorite sport, he got his start in track and field. As a student at Carlisle Institute in Pennsylvania (an Indian college), he watched football being played and decided to give it a shot. He did so well at it, he led his college to a surprise NCAA championship in the months after claiming his world title in the 1912 Olympic Games. Even more interesting, Thorpe won a national collegiate championship in ball room dancing earlier the same year.
When called "the Greatest" by King Gustav, Thorpe had just defeated the Olympic favorite by nearly 1,000 points. What made his exploits even more shocking was that he hadn't practiced all that much in the events that made up the decathlon.
Thorpe was also a legendary lacrosse player and had success as a professional baseball and football player. He later served as the first president of the American Professional Football Association, a league that would later change its name to the National Football League, the NFL.
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Editor's note: John McGee is an award-winning columnist and sports writer. He can be contacted through The Times at [email protected].
Sports on 05/18/2016