Teenager achieves three best scores at decathlon

A TEENAGER from Wargrave has achieved his highest score in an international senior decathlon.

Sammy Ball, 19, of Victoria Road, notched up 7,913 points after competing in 10 disciplines at the Decastar Centre in Bordeaux.

He holds the second highest score ever for a British teenager behind former decathlete and double Olympic champion Daley Thompson.

Ball, who was the youngest competitor at the decathlon two weeks ago, achieved three new personal bests in three events.

He threw the javelin 53.07m, completed the 1,500m in four minutes and 26.64 seconds and leapt 7.23m in the long jump. He finished 10th out of 18 athletes.

The former Piggott School pupil said: “I was very happy with the result. I did have aims of scoring around 8,000 points, so I was slightly below that, but getting three personal bests, I can’t complain, really.

“It’s definitely the highest-level competition I’ve competed in so I am very proud of what I achieved.

“Having previously competed in the under-20s events, was quite different being against senior men now. Some of the top athletes in the world were there but I was more focused on my own performance and trying to increase my own score.

“I did get a little bit nervous but I found that the adrenaline helped me out.”

Ball also ran the 100m in 10.88 seconds, the 400m in 48.14 seconds, cleared 4.47m in the pole vault, “put” the shot 14.72m and threw the discus in 39.80m. He finished the 110m hurdles in 14.78 seconds.

Ball said he was happy with his high jump, which was an improvement on his last competition in Birmingham in July where he won gold in the athletics championships event and was the youngest competitor.

“My high jump score was a big improvement from Birmingham,” he said. “But I had been managing a few small problems then so being injury free for this one was the main thing.

“I had a small blip in the pole vault, where the pole slipped out of my hand, and banged my knee but other than that I’m not too beaten up after this one, which is not something I can often say.

“I was pretty tired on the second day and the results weren’t bad but compared to how well I’ve been doing in training for those events, the hurdles and the pole vault and the discus, the training’s been going really well so I was slightly disappointed with those.”

Ball, who trained for between 15 and 20 hours a week for the competition, faced difficult weather conditions for the long jump. He said: “The wind was changing direction and it’s important to get your run-up right in that event.

“If the wind’s behind you, it’s going to push you over the board. Whereas, if you’ve got a headwind, it’s going to make it harder to make it on to the landing area.

“But the crowd was amazing and they started clapping. Everyone started to get into it and I find it did boost me quite a lot. It motivates me.”

He added: “Everyone’s friendly and cheering each other on in the competition, which you don’t get in a lot of other events so I wasn’t that intimidated. I was more just enjoying the experience.”

Each athlete was cheered on with a different theme song being played for the track events and Ball’s was Holding out for a Hero by Bonnie Tyler.

His parents Lincoln and Sarah went out to support him. Mr Ball said: “It was a fantastic crowd and that really helped the athletes and the atmosphere was electric.

“Sammy has been to the world under-20 championships and to the European under-20 championships but here the crowd cheered every jump and every throw and each of the athletes has their own theme tune.

“When they do the run-up, everyone’s clapping to the tune. The organisers like to bring in young talent as well as established talent, so Sammy got an invite, which was fantastic.

“It felt great just being in the middle of it all and watching the results of all that hard work and all that training across the winter, going through ups and downs with him with his injuries and being able to complete an international level.

“Sarah and I were feeling exhilarated because he put in a really good 1,500 metres to get him past that 7,900 points barrier. He surpassed it with two seconds to spare and he planned and executed that event particularly well.”