Ashton Eaton retains Olympic title in Rio

Not only did he win the gold medal in the decathlon at the Rio Games on Thursday night, but the victory marked the American’s second consecutive Olympics with decathlon dominance. Eaton held on over two days to join Bob Mathias and Daley Thompson in the select group.

Decathlon champion Ashton Eaton may not make it to the 2020 Olympics, but he is still set to extend his career.

“My throwing has been bad in the past, but I really got after the discus and shot here”, he added.

Dalilah Muhammad became the first American woman to win the 400-meter hurdles after she scythed through the field, clocking a time of 53.13 seconds to win by a margin of 0.42 seconds.

Eaton accumulated 8,893 points, comfortably ahead of the second place finisher, Kevin Mayer of France, but shy of the world record Eaton set previous year. He finished third in the last event, the 1,500, to win gold from France’s Kevin Mayer on 8,834 points.

Eaton said: “You look at 10 events, how can’t there be one stinking point in there somewhere?”

“I wasn’t nervous, I was willing to run myself into the hospital if I had to”, Eaton told reporters after the competition. “For us to have done this together, I can’t put it into words”.

Her male counterpart, Kerron Clement, won his hurdles race during the morning session, earning a gold medal to put in a spot in his trophy case where a note now sits reserving the space for his Rio hardware. “To equal it – it’s like I guess I’ll leave something on the table”, said Eaton.

The Olympic shot put record that Crouser broke dated back a long time. The 23-year-old Crouser recorded the three best throws of his career, starting with 22.22 on his second attempt to take an early lead and improving it to 22.26 before his biggest shot of the night on his fifth attempt.

Eaton has now won successive Olympic and world titles to confirm his status at the best all-around athlete in the world. Tomas Walsh of New Zealand won bronze. Sunette Viljoen took silver and Barbora Spotakova bronze.