An Olympic Hurdle: Why Is The Decathlon Only For Men?

Chasing opportunity and equality, women are campaigning for their own 10-event competition, rather than just the heptathlon, at the Paris Games in 2024
Jordan Gray wants to bring a women’s decathlon to the Olympics. Even if it happens long after she is able to compete in the event.
“The goal is 2024,” Gray, a 25-year-old Georgia native and the U.S. record-holder in the women’s decathlon, said recently. Her movement Let Women Decathlon is nearing 20,000 petition signatures in favor of adding the event to the Olympic Games in the name of gender equality in track and field, and it is gaining the support of Olympics icons who broke similar barriers decades ago.
“The women are lined up,” Gray said. Women’s decathlon is already approved by certain governing bodies in the sport, such as the International Association of Athletics Federations and U.S.A. Track & Field. The event has been contested by women around the world for decades, but in the United States, the first decathlon national title for women was awarded in 2019.
With roots in ancient Greece, the decathlon a series of 10 track and field events made its Olympic debut in 1912. Like most Olympic sports at the time, only men participated.
Pat Winslow Connolly was among the first to compete in the women’s pentathlon when it was introduced at the Tokyo Olympics in
Contested over two days, the decathlon was made up of 100-meter, 400-meter and 1,500-meter runs, 110-meter hurdles, the long jump, high jump, pole vault, discus throw, shot-put and javelin throw. Shortly after its introduction, the competition became known as the determiner of the world’s
Women’s track and field events first appeared in the Olympics in 1928, with three races and two throwing events, only to see the 800-meter race eliminated for several decades because numerous athletes had collapsed at the finish line, raising concerns that women were not physically equipped to run that far.
“The men collapsed just as much,” said Pat Winslow Connolly, a three-time Olympian woman to compete in the 800-meter race when it returned to the Olympics in 1960. She was also among the first competitors in the women’s Olympic pentathlon (80-meter hurdles, shot-put, high jump, long jump and 200-meter run) when it was introduced in 1964.

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