2023-12-13 20:00:46
Still struggling with his body, the double world champion and main chance of a medal for French athletics at the next Parisian Olympics preferred to cancel his participation in the Brisbane decathlon scheduled for this weekend.
A postponement as a precaution. Not yet well recovered from several physical problems, double Olympic silver medalist Kevin Mayer announced this Wednesday, December 13 that he would not participate in the decathlon scheduled in Brisbane (Australia) this weekend, and that he was postponing his goal Olympic qualification for the 2024 Olympics at the end of March. “It was the first option, the most comfortable, but also the most reckless, because I left Budapest (the 2023 Worlds at the end of August) injured,” he summarized from Brisbane (Australia) where he has been training for several weeks, during a video conference with a handful of journalists.
The abandonment of Mayer (31), caught by a painful Achilles tendon during the decathlon of the 2023 Worlds in Budapest in August, had prevented him from achieving the Olympic minimums, in this case a total of 8,460 points .
“A lot of apprehension”
The double world decathlon champion also spoke on Wednesday of the residue of discomfort in a hip dating from Budapest after having “fallen badly at length”. “We did the last test yesterday (Tuesday) at the hurdles, I didn’t have any pain, but there was a lot of apprehension. Clearly, there is no huge alert” but “it’s a little premature to do high-intensity hurdles,” he explained. “I would not have been reasonable if I had done the decathlon, it would have taken another month or two, we will give it to each other. It is the choice of reason,” Mayer continued.
His route to Paris will therefore take a new detour, in San Diego, California, at the end of March (from the 21st to the 23rd). “It’s quite comfortable to say that I have three months. And March is very early in the season, it will have no impact on the Olympics themselves. I am quite calm with this choice” rather than “rushing into the first decathlon that arrives,” he said. Often suffering from physical glitches in recent years, his last completed decathlon dates back to July 2022 at the World Championships in Eugene (Oregon, United States), the scene of his second world champion title after 2017.
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