Decathlete anthropometrics over time

Abstract

Most of the greatest athletes in the world across most sports, including Olympic medalists, have become taller and heavier over time and at rates that outstrip secular general population trends. Within this general trend, anthropometric data drawn from medalists across 30 Olympiads, from 1896 through 2024, identify an anomaly. While Olympic medalists across most of the ten individual events that compose the decathlon event, on balance, became taller and heavier over time, height and weight changes for Olympic decathlon medalists over these same years, by contrast, were comparatively more modest. Additionally, decathletes’ heights and weights cluster more tightly around the means and, in so doing, imply comparatively less body size variation across decathletes. One key finding from prior related research on decathletes’ overall success emphasizes decathletes’ need to optimize performance across the event's ten separate disciplines. Results from this study's comparisons of anthropometric data imply that consequences of decathletes’ efforts to optimize their success across ten separate events spill-over into and help account for decathletes’ comparative height and weight stability over time.