Athletics Olympic hopeful
Decathlete Neugebauer breaks Busemann record
As of: 12:33 p.m. | Reading time: 2 minutes
Heading towards the Olympics: Leo Neugebauer
Source: dpa/Sven Hoppe
A good four months before the Olympic Games in Paris, decathlete Leon Neugebauer is sending a strong signal to the competition: The 23-year-old has secured the next German record for a track and field star.
A year ago, Leo Neugebauer improved Jürgen Hingsen’s 39-year-old record and became the shooting star of the decathletes – now it was the turn of Frank Busemann, Olympic silver medalist in Atlanta in 1996, to set a record: the man studying in Texas achieved this at the college championships in Boston Neugebauer scored 6,347 points in the heptathlon, improving Frank Busemann’s 22-year-old national indoor record. In February 2002, he collected a total of 6,291 points in the hall.
With this, Neugebauer impressively underlined that he is one of the German athletics hopes at the Olympic Games in Paris this summer. With his achievement, he is the first German to surpass the 6,300 point mark. Another DLV athlete impressed in third place in the competition in Boston: Till Steinforth maintained his position from the previous day in the last three disciplines and collected a total of 6140 points.
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Neugebauer’s first indoor heptathlon of the Olympic year was promising with a personal best of 6,219 points. In the pole vault, however, he gave away an even better overall score of 4.85 meters. In Boston he impressed with 5.16 meters.
Fifth place at the World Cup as an incentive
It was in June 2023 when Neugebauer first made headlines: At a small meeting in Texas, he improved decathlon legend Jürgen Hingsen’s almost four-decade-old German record. “I would have liked to have reached 40 years,” said Hingsen at the time. “But I think it’s sensational, it’s phenomenal. Of course I’m really happy, but I’m also a little sad.”
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At the following World Cup, the 23-year-old from VfB Stuttgart finished fifth, after which he said: “The good thing is that I learned from it and that there is a more important competition next year, the Olympic Games. And that’s what I learned.”
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Neugebauer’s achievements in Boston in detail:
60 meters 6.98 seconds Long jump: 7.73 meters Shot put: 16.72 meters High jump: 2.09 meters 60 meters hurdles: 8.25 seconds Pole vault: 5.16 meters Pole vault 1000 meters: 2:46.42 minutes
