NSAF alum Gunnar Nixon at the IAAF World Champs

by Elliott Denman

IAAF WC photos by John Nepolitan; 2010 CSI photo by NSAF Staff

 

MOSCOW - For sure, for sure, Gunnar Nixon knows his second day in the decathlon “needs a lot of work.”

Then again, he’s reminded of the brilliant first-day results he posted in the 14th edition of the World Championships of Track and Field at Luzhniki Stadium.

Youth spoiled on the young?   Certainly not on Gunnar Nixon.

Only USA world record-holding teammate Ashton Eaton was better than the sizzling young Nixon after Saturday’s first five events.  After high-jumping 7 feet and a quarter inch, Nixon actually led the world – yes, yes, the entire track and field universe – after four events.

Reigning Olympic champion Eaton would eventually push Nixon back into second place with his 46.02 400-meter, fifth-event performance late Saturday, as Nixon ran a creditable 48.56.

Reality, of course, set in through Sunday’s concluding five as Nixon dropped 11 places and wound up 13th in the Worlds with a total of 8,312 points – still a PR by more than 100 points.

The 25-year-old Eaton, who set the world record of 9,039 points at the 2012 USA Olympic Trials and won the London Olympic gold medal with 8,869, would go on to win his first Worlds gold with an 8,809 score – and continuing to prove to track and field purists, anyway – that he is “the greatest athlete on earth.”

Newlywed Eaton’s next role: Cheering wife Brianne (competing for Canada) to glory in the women’s heptathlon.

But back to decathlon’s future, back to Gunnar Nixon.

Numbers told just a fraction of his story.

The wiry lad from Edmond, Oklahoma came to the Russian capital with bright hopes and big-time ambitions.  And he’ll leave town brimming all kinds of new confidence.

At 20 days and 208 days old, Nixon was the youngest of 33 decathletes who reported for duty Saturday morning, and he wound up outscoring an array of his elders.

“No doubt about it, this whole trip to the World Championships was an incredible experience for me,” said Nixon. “I’ll be able to put so many things to work in my training once I get back.”

Nixon’s rise to global recognition as a senior athlete should surprise no one.

Certainly not Jim Spier, Joy Kamani and other staffers at the National Scholastic Athletics Foundation.

They’ve been cheering his performances all along.

NSAF funding enabled Nixon to travel to the 2010 Caribbean Scholastic Invitational, where he high jumped 6-4 3/4 for third place (photo, lower right), threw the javelin 159-9 to place third, and capped it with a leg on the winning 3:17.55 4x400 relay team.

The 2010 Nike Indoor Nationals and the 2011 New Balance Indoor Nationals rank among Nixon’s favorite meets, too – for obvious reasons. He collected championship rings in both of them, registering 4,141 points in 2010 (with a 7-0 1/2 high jump included) and national-record 4,307-point total in 2011.

Further NSAF travel grants enabled Nixon to compete in the 2010 Youth Olympic Trials and Junior Olympic Nationals, and the 2011 Simplot Games, Arcadia Invitational and USATF Junior Championships.  He set three national records during the 2011 outdoor season.

The hotly-recruited Nixon chose the University of Arkansas as his collegiate destination but stayed in Fayetteville just a year and a half. That 2012 campaign saw him place third in the SEC decathlon and fifth in the NCAAs, then win the USATF Junior Nationals en route to a big-big victory in the World Junior Championships in Barcelona, Spain.

These days, he’s based at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, California.

These 2013 Worlds also represented just his seventh “dec” competing with senior-level implements.

“I feel absolutely great right now,” said Nixon in the mixed zone underneath Luzhniki Stadium Sunday night, after the 1500 meters wrapped it all up and the entire field set out on the ritual lap of honor – to the cheers of an appreciative audience – round the outer edges of the 400-meter track.

Most decathletes turn that concluding 1500 into a trudge – but Nixon summoned the energy to put on a strong last-lap burst, to pass at least five rivals, and complete the three-and-three-quarter-lap run in 4:35.82.

Here’s how Nixon analyzed his second-day performance:

“The 110 hurdles, they went decent for me (14.57)  I was close to my season-best. There were a couple of re-starts. The race felt good, I just couldn’t get over them fast enough.

“The discus, that’s where I set a personal best (42.38 meters/139-0) so I was pretty happy with that. You can’t ever complain when you get a personal best.

“But I know I can eventually do 52 (meters).”

Next up, though, was the pole vault, where he’d flirt with disaster.

“I had two scratches on my opening height, was pretty close to a no-mark, and that would have wrecked my whole decathlon.

“I just wasn’t running well, and knew I’d have to gear up for that third attempt and bring some heat on the runway.”

So he did just that, went up-up-up and over, and saved his day.

“My javelin was decent (57.97 meters/190-2), two meters under my best, so not too bad.

“Then in the 1500, I felt my hamstring grab a couple of times and couldn’t really push as hard as I’d have liked.”

But he still had that final burst in him to complete the biggest 10-event performance of his life.

“This is the best I’ve ever felt after a decathlon,” he summed.

“The thing is, I know I can do a lot better, especially in the throws, especially second day.

“There’s still a lot more there.”

To Dr. Frank Zarnowski, considered the leading world guru of the multi-events, this 2013 decathlon was a huge indicator in the run-up to the 2016 Rio De Janeiro Olympics....and likely beyond.

“The future of the event was right out there, for all to see, these two days,” said Dr. Z.

He knows that 25-year-old Eaton’s current rule is unquestioned.

But he also sees Canada’s Damian Warner (age 23, who placed third); Russia’s Ilya Shkurenev (22, eighth place); Serbia’s Mihail Dudas (23, 14th place), and Belgium’s Thomas Van Der Plaetsen 22, 15th place) as rapid climbers on the world scene.

Then again, he wouldn’t be surprised to see America’s Gunnar Nixon climb past all of them.

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