Phelps the greatest olympian of all time no way Daley Tompson would kick his arse.
Athletics
[edit] Early career
Initially, he was a member of
Haywards Heath Harriers, but when he returned to London in 1975 he joined the
Essex Beagles club, training as a sprinter. He began to be coached by Bob Mortimer, who suggested he try for decathlon. He competed in his first decathlon later that year in
Cwmbran,
Wales, which he won along with his next competition. In 1976 he won the
AAA title and was 18th at the
Montréal Olympic Games. The following year, he won the European Junior title and in 1978 came the first of his three
Commonwealth titles. In 1979, he failed to finish in his only decathlon of that year, but won the long jump at the UK Championships.
[edit] 1980-1986-breaking records
Thompson opened the 1980 Olympic season with a world decathlon record of 8,648 points at Götzis, Austria, in May, and followed this with a comfortable win at the
Moscow Olympics. After a quiet 1981 season, he was in devastating form in 1982; back at Götzis in May, he raised the world record to 8,730 points and then in September, at the
European Championships in Athens, he took the record up to 8,774 points. The following month in Brisbane, Thompson took his second
Commonwealth title. In 1983, Daley won the inaugural
World Championships and became the first decathlete to hold the
European,
World and Olympic titles simultaneously. He spent much of the summer of 1984 in California preparing for the defence of his Olympic title, with
Jürgen Hingsen, the West German who had succeeded Thompson as the world record holder, expected to be a major threat. Thompson took the lead in the first event and was never headed throughout the competition, although it seemed that, by easing off in the 1,500 metres he had missed tying the world record by just one point. When the photo-finish pictures were examined, however, it was found that Thompson should have been credited with one more point in the 110 metres hurdles so he had in fact, equalled Hingsen’s record. Then when the new scoring tables were introduced, Thompson became the sole record holder once more with a recalculated score of 8,847 points – a world record that stood until 1992, when it was surpassed by the
American athlete
Dan O'Brien with a score of 8891. His two victories in the decathlon are a feat shared only with the American
Bob Mathias. Thompson's 1984 performance is still the
UK record.
[edit] 1987-1990-defeat and injury
After his Olympic success, Thompson won his third
Commonwealth title in 1986 but after that he never quite recaptured the superlative form of earlier years. In 1987 he suffered his first decathlon defeat for nine years when he finished ninth in the World Championships, and at his third
Olympics in Seoul in 1988 he finished fourth. He made the
Commonwealth Games team for the fourth time in 1990, but was forced to withdraw because of injury
