Dan O'Brien

American decathlete and 1996 Olympic champion who set a world record of 8,891 points and won three consecutive World Championship titles in the 1990s.

Dan O'Brien attended the University of Idaho before becoming the world's premier decathlete of the 1990s, winning his first World Championship title in Tokyo in 1991. Entering 1992 as the favourite to be crowned 'the world's greatest athlete' at the Barcelona Olympics, O'Brien and rival Dave Johnson were the subjects of Reebok's $30 million 'Dan & Dave' advertising campaign leading into the Games. Disaster struck at the U.S. Olympic Trials, where O'Brien no-heighted in the pole vault, scoring zero points and dropping from first to eleventh place, failing to qualify for Barcelona entirely — one of the most publicised failures in sports history. Rather than fold under the embarrassment, O'Brien regrouped weeks later at the Décastar meet in Talence, France, setting a new decathlon world record of 8,891 points. O'Brien went on to win the World Championship title again in 1993 and 1995, plus the 1994 Goodwill Games, and finally claimed the Olympic gold medal he had missed in 1992 at the Atlanta 1996 Games. He also won the World Indoor heptathlon title in 1993 and earned the year-end world number one ranking from Track & Field News on six occasions. O'Brien's world record stood until 1999, and his American record was not broken until 2012, by Ashton Eaton. He retired officially in 2004 and has remained active in athletics coaching and commentary, later co-writing a memoir, Clearing Hurdles: The Quest to Be the World's Greatest Athlete.

Versatile all-round decathlon specialist strong across all ten disciplines

One of the greatest decathletes in history, remembered for turning a public failure into a world record