#USATF Championships: Ashton Eaton ‘Fired Up’ After Long Jump Performance

Former Oregon Duck and Bend native Ashton Eaton hoped for a strong showing in the long jump at the USATF Championships this week at Hayward Field. Eaton did not enter the decathlon, his main event (okay, main ten events) as part of an overall plan to increase his leg strength as well as not aggravate a strained back.

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Eaton and coach Harry Marra even thought he had a chance to win the event. While that didn’t happen, Eaton did do very well when compared against his fellow decathletes.

His best jump of 25-feet 8-and-three-quarter inches was more than a foot off his personal best of 27-feet made during his record-breaking decathlon at the 2012 Olympic Trials. While Eaton finished 14th in the regular event, that very same jump would have won the decathlon long jump by about five inches over Curtis Beach, who went 25’3 ½”.

Nonetheless, Eaton would have preferred a better result.

He told the Bend Bulletin, “(I’m) very fired up right now. I was watching the decathlon guys run the 400 and I was like, man, I wish I had another event to take this out on.”

Instead of that other event, he instead shouted encouragement to the decathletes as they finished their first day with that run.

“I know the yelling doesn’t really do anything,” he told the Bulletin, “But I was just saying, ‘Hey, wish I was there, you’re doing good, stay tough.’”

Eaton: “I wish I had another event to take this out on.”

Eaton said he would have entered Sunday’s pole vault as well (his personal best is 17-feet 4-and-a-quarter inches, also set during the 2012 Trials), but did not want to aggravate his back with the 2015 World Championships in Beijing in mid-August. As the defending decathlon world champion Eaton is automatically invited, which is why he didn’t enter the event at the U.S. Championships.

While on the surface the 14th-place finish seems like a poor result, Eaton showed that he is still capable of outjumping his fellow decathletes. That indicates that his training plan of skipping the decathlon is working out. The World Championships will be Eaton’s first competitive decathlon in two years, and that will be the biggest test of the plan as he looks to the 2016 Olympics and beyond.