Resilient decathlete early crowd pleaser at world championships

As athletes go, they don't come much more versatile than decathletes. They embody all the essentials of athletics, trying to run faster, jump higher and throw farther than the competition. Kim Kun-woo, the South Korean decathlete who broke his own national record Sunday during these World Championships in Athletics, compared competing in decathlon to climbing up a mountain -- taking one step up at a time toward the goal. "When you break a record, the sense of accomplishment and reward is really incomparable," Kim said after earning 7,860 points to rank 17th over two days of decathlon. The previous mark had been 7,824, which Kim established in 2006. "The great thing about decathlon is that even if you fall back in one discipline, you can still make up ground in other events," Kim added. Of course, decathlon is not so simple. Athletes earn points over two days based on their records in 10 events: 100?, 110? hurdles, 400?, 1,500?, high jump, long jump, pole vault, shot put, discus throw and javelin throw. It isn't just the sheer number of disciplines, but the order in which athletes have to take on these events. On Day 1, decathletes first did the 100? dash, and an hour later, they lined up for long jump. Then after about a two-hour break, they had to do their shot put. It was much the same on the second day, with 110m hurdles followed an hour later by the discus throw and pole vault soon afterward. Eight of the 30 decathletes here withdrew without completing all 10 events. It wasn't easy for Kim, either, but he tried to feed on the encouragements of partisan fans at Daegu Stadium. It didn't hurt that he was born in Pohang, a city about an hour away from here. "I was able to break the Korean record, thanks to the support of the fans," said Kim, who often gestured to the fans to make noise and smiled and fist-pumped when he was captured on the stadium's main scoreboard. He later confessed he didn't want to appear nervous before home fans and forced himself to smile and clap. Decathlon is known to build camaraderie among athletes, since they compete and push each other over two days of grueling events and they can all relate to each other's hardships and pain. Ashton Eaton, the silver medalist here from the U.S., said he was so touched when Leonel Suarez, who took the bronze and was only four points behind Eaton, congratulated him in his broken English and told him, "Great race!" Eaton had just beaten Suarez in the point standings by winning the final discipline, the 1,500?, and he said the exchange gave him a new perspective about competition. But Kim has been a solitary figure in South Korean decathlon. Local officials say there are perhaps 20 decathletes nationwide, and Kim, who won the national high school championship in 1997, is really the only one capable of competing in international events. He has now broken the national record four times, winning a silver and a bronze at the Asian Games in the process, and overcoming a serious foot injury that kept him out of the sport for almost three years. Kim did yeoman's work to break his own national record and put up the best mark of the season in six of the 10 disciplines. But it still wasn't enough to get him over the coveted 8,000-point barrier. In decathlon, athletes scoring in the mid- to high-8,000s often win titles. Here, Trey Hardee of the U.S. won the gold with 8,607 points. Kim said his goal all along had been to get more than 8,000 points. "I am disappointed that I couldn't meet the goal," he said. "At the next opportunity, I will try to make some technical improvements. I will pursue 8,000 points until the end of my career." Kim said the Daegu event was both a learning experience and a boost to his confidence. "I've recovered my confidence here, and I will try not to repeat the same mistakes," he said. "I also learned a lot about pacing myself and managing each event. I learned that it was important to focus on one event at a time."