Eaton, pushed by Mayer, extends decathlon dominance

American Ashton Eaton equalled the Olympic record when retaining his decathlon crown on Thursday, but he was pushed all the way by France’s Kevin Mayer.

Eaton amassed 8,893 points in the gruelling 10-discipline event to tie with the Czech Republic’s Roman Sebrle record set at the 2004 Athens Games.

His victory extended his remarkable unbeaten streak in combined events competition that stretches back to his triumph in London in 2012.

Mayer won silver with a French record of 8,834pts, Canada’s Damian Warner taking bronze (8,666).

But it all came down to the final event, the 1500m, with Mayer in for a chance of victory himself, albeit a slim one.

The Frenchman, winning his country’s first decathlon medal since 1948, needed to beat Eaton by seven seconds.

But Eaton moved past Mayer with 200 metres of the 1500m to go to make sure of the win.

Eaton had at one stage been on target to better his own world record or at least a 9,000+ score, but just faded away.

His racked up bests of 10.46sec in the 100m, 7.84m in the long jump, 14.74m in the shot put, 2.01m in the high jump, 46.07sec in the 400m, 13.58sec in the 110m hurdles, 45.49m in the discus, 5.20m in the pole vault, 59.77m in the javelin before clocking 4:23.33 in the 1500m.