The Olympics are winding down, with just a few days of events left at Paris 2024 after two weeks of games. track & field (known by the rest of the world as athletics) is one of the concluding events, running right up until the last day of games before the closing ceremony.
On Thursday, the heptathlon starts. It is a multi-sport track & field event that features a summation of scores across the events to determine the medalists. The heptathlon is competed by women, the decathlon is the closest male equivalent.
Events in the Heptathlon
These are the events athletes compete in in the heptathlon at the Olympics:
- 100m hurdles
- High jump
- Shot put
- 200m race
- Long jump
- Javelin throw
- 800m race
The point? It's hard enough to be elite at one event, beating a field of athletes in a summation game is a great measure of an all-around athlete. The medalists for this event truly have to earn their spoils across the two days of grueling competition.
How Does Heptathlon Scoring Work?
Both decathlon and heptathlon scoring is a little complex to lay out in layman's terms for watching it as a leisure supporter. There is a formula that goes into it that inputs the athlete's time, distance, or height (based on whatever event) and essentially scales it against a base score, spitting out a final number that is used as their event score.
Simpler, perhaps, is to have in mind what would achieve 1,000 points in each event. Here is that:
Heptathlon Full Schedule
Those of us in America will need to get up at weird, crazy hours to watch the events in the heptathlon. Thankfully, the final event that could very well determine the final medal standings, is at a reasonable afternoon time. All events are available on Peacock, and expect their bounce-around Gold Zone coverage to jump to the final 800m race on Friday. Here's how you can watch that.
Why the Difference Between Men's Multi-event and Women's?
The main difference between the decathlon and heptathlon is the number of events. The men's multi-event has 10 events (hence the "deca") and the women's has seven (hence the "hepta"). The reason for the inequity? Unfortunately, there's not a perfectly satisfactory one. Historically (as in, over 100 years ago) there were sexist and inaccurate assumptions about the event (and track & field in general) being too hard and grueling for women. The inequity was carried for some time for those reasons, and while it may not be an explicit reason for the difference today, it has played a part in a long history that is tough to change.
There's been a rising call for more equity in this event between the men's and women's sides of the sport, but practically speaking, it's hard enough to train and master seven events, and even harder to add the extra three.
We could see a women's decathlon in the future, but for now it remains the seven-event heptathlon.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as What is a Heptathlon? Every Sport in the Event.
