Long-time subscribers to the list would know that my paramount interest in track-and-field statistics is the women's pole vault and might be surprised at my current posts on the women's decathlon. Some of those might have guessed that I'd have an ulterior motive, related to the vault.
True. From the earliest IAAF communiques about their (August 2001) recognition of the women's decathlon as an official event, I've happily anticipated the advantage that good vaulters who were also experienced heptathletes would have over other heps who were not vaulters. Specifically, I saw that potential advantage for Stacy Dragila and Canadian vault record-holder Stephanie McCann, both one-time heptathlon specialists. In her inaugural world-record performance at Talence, Marie Collinville's vault was 3.50 meters (about 11'6"). On a very ordinary day, Dragila would top that by well over a meter, McCann by nearly a meter. Those represent huge points differences. The transition from heptathlon to decathlon expertise primarily involves three events--pole vault, discus and 400 meters. I have thought that the first of these required more new learnings than the latter two. After I posted the information about Collinville's decathlon record, another t-and-f subscriber wrote me with a comparison of personal best marks of Collinvillé and Klüft in nine of the ten decathlon events: Event Collonvillé Klüft 100m 12.48 11.48 Discus 34.69 33.96 Pole Vault 3.50 3.16 Javelin 47.19 50.24 400m 56.15 53.17 100mH 13.96 13.18 Long jump 6.18 6.97 Shot 11.90 14.77 High jump 1.80 1.94 1500 5:06.09 no mark Total (for 9 events) 8150 8340 On the basis of personal bests for the first nine decathlon events, with the discus and 400m a stand-off, Collonville's vault advantage (although, in fact she has a 3.60 this season) isn't enough to overcome Klüft's overall superiority in the events shared in the heptathlon and decathlon. Note, though, that the 44cm difference in the vault can be compared with a PB advantage of 91cm (3') by McCann over the best of these and a PB advantage of 133cm (4'4") by Dragila. Certainly Klüft appears in good position to challenge Collinville's record. It seemed to me of interest to take a look at the other heptathletes whose 2004 marks are better than those of Collinvillé, and see whether any have performances in the pole vault, discus and 400m of sufficient quality to be included in Jalava's world deep lists for those events. Those athletes are: Heptathlon Ranking 1 Carolina Klüft (SWE) 6952 2 Svetlana Sololova (RUS) 6591 3 Austra Skujyte (LTU) 6435 4 Kelly Sotherton (GBR) 6424 5 Nataliya Dobrynska (UKR) 6387 6 Yelena Prokhorova (RUS) 6354 7 Margaret Simpson (GHA) 6306 8 Kylie Wheeler (AUS) 6296 8 Shelia Burrell (USA) 6296 10 Sonja Kesselschläger (GER) 6287 ----- 11 Marie Collinvillé (FRA) 6279 When I looked for these athletes in Jalava's lists of the pole vault (minimum 3.60m, 714 vaulters ranked), discus (minimum 48.00m, 393 throwers ranked), and 400m (minimum 54.99, 654 runners ranked), only Collinvillé, with her 3.60m in the pole vault, appeared in any of the lists. In short, none appears to bring big points in any of the new events to contest Klüft's position as the #1 challenger for Collinville's decathlon record. Otherwise, about the only thing I found of interest in this exercise was that each of the top-ten heptathletes represents a different country. I'm sure that's a detail that would only be of interest to another stat-nut, but since I began tabulating national depth lists in 1997, I've seen only four instances of each of the top ten coming from different countries--the men's high jump in 1997, the women's 400m hurdles in 2001, and the men's high jump and women's hammer throw in 2003. Cheers, Roger
