What propels the world-class athlete that final distance to the level of Olympic champion? What skills must he prepare himself with in both body and mind to prevail for the medal? How does he manage to overcome adversity before, during or even after those critical moments of record-setting performance before the eyes of millions? Dan O'Brien's run at Olympic gold in the decathlon certainly had its peaks and valleys, but his own perspective on his athletic career is one of very level intelligence, balance and enormous self-awareness. In fact, “stamina” and being an “athlete at heart” are words that crop up in his own book on training, Dan O'Brien's Ultimate Workout, which explains something of the undying determination and natural enthusiasm of the man. In person, this genial holder of the title “World’s Greatest Athlete” will expand further on what has allowed him to excel repeatedly down through the years.
Hitting his Own Stride in Track and Field Competition
Born in Portland, Oregon, in 1966 to an African-American father and a half-Finnish mother, Dan was adopted by an Irish-American couple from Klamath Falls, Oregon. He took an early interest in Little League baseball, but even then it was his running prowess that attracted attention. By high school, he was active in track, and by graduation time the University of Idaho had offered him a full track scholarship. Although a leg injury in the long jump left him unable to finish the Olympic Trials for Seoul in 1988, for example, by 1990 he was ranked second in the USA and just a year after that, won his first gold medal world championship. Then in perhaps the most stunning disappointment yet at the Olympic Trials in 1992, Dan placed only 11th at the critical event after no-heighting in pole vault.
Being tested at such a critical point in a sports career is never easy for any athlete, especially when so much of it happens with a worldwide audience watching. Still, Dan was back at his best in the intervening non-Olympic years, winning his second and third world championships in ’93 and ’95, along with setting new records in individual events. As the Atlanta Olympics approached in 1996, it became clear that O’Brien was not going to be deterred this time: he won the Olympic Trials, triumphed at last at the Games with a gold in the decathlon, and that year was ranked number one in the world by Track & Field News (with a best of 8824). The following year saw him unable to compete due to a stress fracture, but in 1998 he was back in form with a win at the Goodwill Games (8755) in his only outing of the year. After that, he faced disappointment again in readying for international competition, having strained a plantar fascia in the left arch of his foot while training -- which kept him away from the Sydney Olympics at the last minute.
Finding the Resources to Excel at New Levels
Whatever the outcome of each year’s training, Dan emphasizes that it should not detract from the ultimate commitment: “The decathlon is basically about competing against yourself each and every time—giving a hundred percent effort in every event and trying to compete against yourself all the time,” he explained at the time. “I can go out and play golf and get kind of the same personal challenge, obviously—I see a lot of similarities between the two—but the decathlon is almost the set-up of a lifestyle for me, in the fact that with each event you have to deal singularly, like every day you have a good day or a bad day but you have to continue on to the next one and not let the last one affect you. In the decathlon, it’s very important to go from one event to the next without a lot of mood changes or things like that, and understand that whether you have failure or success, you must continue on.”
The insights O’Brien has developed over the course of his own career are something he has put to wider use already. For one thing, his workout book applies many of the cross-training benefits he has personally derived in his own specific sport preparation to track and field athletes but also to the wider athletic community. “My training regimen in the decathlon is set up for better fitness, and all the things we do in the book are based on ballistic exercises that I think allow all sorts of athletes to just become a better athlete,” he observes. “I don’t teach people how to throw the shot put or the discus in here, but I do exercises that apply to those events, and those exercises can be applied to a lot of different events—playing tennis, skiing, among others."
Hal W. Peat - Hal Peat is an independent journalist on fitness, exercise, health and sports personalities. He has contributed for over 12 years to a ...
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