Ashton Eaton

American decathlete and two-time Olympic champion who holds the world records in both the decathlon and indoor heptathlon, widely considered the greatest combined-event athlete in history.

Born on 21 January 1988 and raised in rural Oregon, Ashton Eaton was steered toward the decathlon by a high school coach who spotted his all-round natural talent. He starred at the University of Oregon, becoming a five-time NCAA champion and winning the Bowerman Award in 2010 after setting a world record in the indoor heptathlon. Eaton won silver at the 2011 World Championships before his career-defining 2012 season: he broke his own heptathlon world record at the World Indoor Championships, then set a new decathlon world record at the U.S. Olympic Trials, before going on to win Olympic gold at the London Games with 8,869 points. Eaton defended his world title at the 2013 and 2015 World Championships, and at the 2015 Beijing Championships broke his own decathlon world record with 9,045 points, a mark that stood as the outright world record until 2018. At the 2016 Rio Olympics, he successfully defended his Olympic title, becoming only the third man in history — after Bob Mathias and Britain's Daley Thompson — to win back-to-back Olympic decathlon golds. Eaton retired from competition in 2017 alongside his wife, Canadian heptathlete Brianne Theisen-Eaton, having gone unbeaten since 2011 and topped 9,000 points on two occasions, a feat only a handful of decathletes have ever achieved. He is widely regarded as the greatest combined-event athlete in the sport's history.

Exceptionally well-rounded across all ten decathlon disciplines

Widely regarded as the greatest combined-event athlete in history