Hot start for Neugebauer in NCAA Champs
Decathlete on pace to top his collegiate and German record from last year's meet
You can call it the elephant in the room.
As John Anderson of ESPN was interviewing Leo Neugebauer of the University of Texas after the first day of the NCAA Track & Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon, on Wednesday, he asked the Longhorn senior to rate his performances in each of the first five events of the decathlon.
The defending champion from Germany gave succinct answers to how he felt he had performed in the 100 meters (solid), long jump (standard), shot put (amazing, but it could have been even more amazing), high jump (very happy, but a little scare there), and 400 (okay, good finish).
However, Anderson never mentioned that Neugebauer’s first-day total of 4,685 points was the highest ever in NCAA history.
Nor did he point out that Neugebauer’s total after the first five events was 94 points higher than he had scored in last year’s NCAA meet when he went on to compile a collegiate record of 8,836 points that broke the German national record of 8,706 that Frank Busemann had set in winning the silver medal in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.
And neither of them brought up the fact that there was a real possibility that Neugebauer could break the 8,900-point barrier with a solid second day on Thursday/today, or even crack the monumental 9,000-point plateau with a great effort.
Only four men have bettered 9,000 points a total of five times in the history of the 10-event decathlon so it was understandable that neither Anderson nor Neugebauer brought up the topic. To do so would have been akin to asking a baseball pitcher about a perfect game they were working on after the first five or six innings. It’s something that’s just not done.
Neugebauer, who had a 257-point lead over second-place Peyton Bair of Mississippi State and a 413-point advantage over third-place Austin West of Iowa after the first five events of the decathlon, began his competition with a time of 10.64 seconds in the 100 meters for a total of 942 points.
That left him in a tie for third place, but he took the overall lead in the next event when he leaped 7.86 meters (25 feet 9½ inches) in the long jump. Then came the shot put when his 17.46 (57-3½) effort was his best ever and more than two meters — as well as 131 points — better than anyone else in the competition.
He then cleared 2.07 (6-9½) in the high jump, which gave him 55 points more than any of his fellow competitors, but he had some concerning moments when he needed all three of his allotted attempts to clear the relatively low height of 1.95 (6-4¾).
Next up was a 48.03 clocking in the 400 that added 908 points to his total and completed his first day with a score that indicated he was very capable of becoming the seventh decathlete in history to top 8,900 points if he has a good, but not necessarily a great, second day.
While Neugebauer had the top individual performance on the first day of the four-day meet at the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field, finals were contested in six men’s events
Five of those finals were in field events, with the sixth coming in the 10,000 meters.
Habtom Samuel of New Mexico was heavily favored to win that event as the freshman from Eritrea had finished second in the NCAA Cross Country Championships last November and run a scorching 26:53.84 in the 10,000 while finishing fifth in The TEN meet in San Juan Capistrano, California, in March.
The pace was round 28:15 to 28:20 for much of the contest on Wednesday, but things got very interesting with about 900 meters left when senior Patrick Kiprop of team-title favorite Arkansas tripped and fell after running too close to one of the runners in front of him in a tightly-bunched lead pack of about a dozen individuals.
Samuel and North Carolina senior Alex Phillip then fell over Kiprop as the remainder of the lead group moved away from them.
Samuel quickly scrambled to his feet and was back amongst the leaders a lap later, but Kiprop and Phillip ended up finishing eighth and 12th, respectively.
Oklahoma State’s Denis Kipngetich led a four-runner lead pack with a lap left, but fellow freshman Ernest Cheruiyot of Texas Tech was in first place ahead of Kipngetich and Samuel with 200 meters to go.
Samuel then stepped on the accelerator with 150 meters remaining and the race for first place was essentially over as he went on to win the race in 28:07.82, followed by Victor Kiprop of Alabama in 28:08.59, Kipngetich in 28:10.25, and Cheruiyot in 28:10.81.
Patrick Kiprop’s eighth-place finish in 28:13.99 garnered only one point for Arkansas in the meet in which the top eight finishers in each event are awarded points on a 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 basis. It also followed a huge setback earlier in the day when Arkansas senior Wayne Pinnock finished fifth in the long jump after having won the NCAA indoor title in March. and placed second to then-teammate Carey McLeod in the outdoor meet last year.
While Pinnock, the silver medalist for Jamaica in last year’s World Athletics Championships, struggled to a best of 7.98 (26-2¼) in the long jump, USC sophomore JC Stevenson moved from seventh place to first on his sixth — and final — attempt of the competition when he spanned a personal best of 8.22 (26-11¾).
After fouling on his first jump, Stevenson had leaped 7.67 (25-2), 7.80 (25-7¼), and a wind-aided 7.85 (25-9¼) on his next three jumps before fouling on his fifth attempt. Then came his sixth try when he topped his previous career best of 8.05 (26-5) that had come in the Mt. San Antonio College Relays in Walnut, California, in April.
Jeremiah Davis of Florida State finished second at 8.07 (26-5¾) on Wednesday, followed by Malcolm Clemons of Florida at 8.05 (26-5).
USC also received a fourth-place jump of 8.03 (26-4¼) from junior Johnny Brackins as the Trojans topped the team standings with a 19-point total after the first day. They were followed by Georgia with 13 points, California with 12½, and Kansas and Mississippi, each with 12.
Georgia received 10 of its 13 points when senior Marc Minichello won the men’s javelin with a best of 80.70 (264-9).
Minichello, who had won the 2022 NCAA title when he was a sophomore at Penn, took the lead with a first-round throw of 78.33 (257-0) before improving to his top mark of 80.70 on his second attempt.
Chandler Ault of Washington finished second with a personal best of 79.31 (260-2), followed by Devoux Deysel of Miami at 75.14 (246-6).
Rowan Hamilton of California had a scant six-centimeter margin of victory in the hammer throw, but he produced four of the top five marks in the competition.
The senior from Canada hit his personal best of 77.18 (253-2) in the third round, but he also had efforts of 76.25 (250-2), 76.23 (250-1), and 76.00 (249-4).
Defending champion Kenneth Ikeji of Harvard placed second at 77.12 (253-0), followed by Angelos Mantzouranis of Minnesota at 75.50 (247-8).
Sophomore Tarik Robinson-O’Hagan of Mississippi and senior Keaton Daniel of Kentucky rounded out the event winners on Wednesday.
Robinson-O’Hagan won the shot put with a personal best of 20.88 (68-6) after also winning the NCAA indoor title in March.
He was delighted to produce the best put of his career on his sixth and final effort of a competition in which he also had the second-best mark of 20.42 (67-0).
He had previously placed seventh in the hammer throw with a personal best of 72.81 (238-10).
Jason Swarens of Wisconsin finished second in the shot put at 20.38 (66-10½), followed by Dylan Targgart of South Carolina at 20.23 (66-4½).
Like Robinson-O’Hagan in the shot put, Daniel won the pole vault after also winning the NCAA title indoors.
Daniel, who cleared 5.67 (18-7¼) on Wednesday, also had first-attempt clearances at 5.37 (17-7¼), 5.52 (18-1¼), and 5.62 (18-5¼).
He then missed once at 5.72 (18-9¼) before passing to 5.82 (19-1) and missing both of his remaining tries at that height.
Clayton Simms of Kansas finished second at 5.62 (18-5¼), with Christyan Sampy of Houston and Simen Guttormsen of Duke tying for third place at 5.52 (18-1¼).
Cody Johnston of Illinois, James Rhoads of Penn, and Skyler Magula of Cal also cleared 5.52, but Sampy and Guttormsen tied for third on the tiebreaker because they had fewer misses (three) in the competition than did the other three.
In addition to the six men’s finals on Wednesday, semifinals were held in 10 track events, with the top qualifiers advancing to their respective finals on Friday.
Freshman Ja’Kobe Tharp of Auburn, junior Caleb Dean of Texas Tech, and sophomore Christian Morales Williams of Georgia had some of the top performances in their respective events.
Tharp looked incredibly smooth in tying his U.S. U20 (under 20) record of 13.18 seconds in the 110-meter high hurdles and Dean tied his personal best of 48.05 in the 400 intermediate hurdles.
Morales Williams was the leading qualifier in the 400 at 44.96 after clocking a Canadian record and yearly world-leading time of 44.05 in winning the SEC title on May 11.
Today’s meet will start at 2:30 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time, with the staging of the high hurdles in the decathlon.
The first final of the women’s meet will be the hammer throw, starting at 6 p.m., with semifinals of the 4 x 100-meter relays beginning the track portion of the meet at 8:32 p.m.