Taiwo records new personal decathlon best of 8303 in Gotzis...
GOTZIS, Austria—University of Washington alum Jeremy Taiwo (left/photo by Paul Merca) finished sixth Sunday in the 41st Hypo-Bank Meeting, completing his first decathlon since finishing third at the 2013 USA outdoor championships, scoring a new personal best of 8303 points.
Taiwo entered day two in second behind Kai Kazmirek of Germany with a first day score of 4388 points, only one point short of his opening day best score of 4389, set at the 2013 NCAA championships, where he scored 8239 points.
Wearing K-tape on the front of his left leg, the Newport HS grad began day two by running 14.47 in the 110 hurdles. In that race, he stumbled between hurdles 8 & 9, clearing the final two hurdles awkwardly, and possibly missing out on an opportunity to top his event personal best of 14.11 and take the lead.
In the discus, he threw 141-7 (43.16m), a new personal best to bring his seven-event total to 6032, only five points out of the lead.
In the pole vault, he cleared 16-0.75 (4.90m) on his third attempt to score 880 points but dropped to third with 6912 points.
Event number nine was where the field opened up a gap on Taiwo, as he only threw the javelin 161-6 (49.22m), a mark only worth 577 points, dropping him all the way to eighth with 7489 points.
Taiwo won the 1500 meters, running 4:19.64 and scoring 814 points to end up with a final score of 8303, which is the current best score by an American this season, and most importantly, gets him over both the world championships and Olympic decathlon standard of 8075 points.
In a side note, Taiwo became the first man in the history of the Gotzis decathlon to win both the high jump (7-0.5/2.15m, 944 points) and the 1500.
Kazmirek won the competition with a world leading score of 8462 points.
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