Athletics Leo Neugebauer
“The best athlete in America is a huge German”
Status: 11:21 am | Reading time: 3 minutes
Leo Neugebauer shines in the USA and has his sights set on the Olympic Games (archive photo)
Source: dpa/Sven Hoppe
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Decathlete Leo Neugebauer is one of Germany’s great Olympic hopes. He is skipping the European Championships and is currently competing in the US College Championships. There he is on the verge of a historic triumph. US media are also celebrating the exceptional athlete.
Olympic hopeful Leo Neugebauer was in strong form in the first half of the decathlon at the college championships in the USA. The athlete from VfB Stuttgart collected 4685 points on Wednesday in Eugene in the US state of Oregon – the 9000 point mark is within reach a good two months before the Olympic Games. His own German record of 8836 points is shaky ahead of the second day, which he goes into as the leader.
So far, only four athletes have achieved 9,000 points in the history of the decathlon: the Frenchman and world record holder Kevin Mayer (9,126), the American Ashton Eaton (9,045), the Czech Roman Sebrle (9,026) and the Canadian Damian Warner (9,018).
With 17.46 meters in the shot put, he set a new college record in the 2022 World Cup stadium, and he also took first place with 7.86 meters in the long jump and 2.07 meters in the high jump. Two weeks before his 24th birthday, he also ran the 100 meters in 10.64 seconds and the 400 meters in 48.03 seconds. This was almost a second slower than the German record a year ago.
“I can’t complain, after all I had the best first day of my career. I would have liked to run the 400 meters a little faster, but my legs didn’t allow it,” said Leo Neugebauer on Instagram.
“Only the sky is the limit”
US media have also long since become aware of this exceptional athlete. The Wall Street Journal, for example, dedicated a large article to Neugebauer under the title “The Best Athlete in America is a Giant German”.
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A year ago, Leo Neugebauer beat Jürgen Hingsen’s 39-year-old record and became the shooting star of the decathletes – then it was the turn of a record set by Frank Busemann, Olympic silver medalist in Atlanta in 1996: At the college championships in Boston, he achieved 6347 points in the heptathlon, thereby improving Busemann’s 22-year-old national indoor record. In February 2002, he had collected a total of 6291 points. “The sky is the limit,” said Neugebauer himself last year in an interview with “Olympics.com”
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Neugebauer, who studies and trains at the University of Texas in Austin, is skipping the European Championships in Rome for the US College Championships. The NCAA Championships are the dress rehearsal for Paris 2024: “The Olympic Games are the ultimate goal for every athlete. You want to say: ‘I am an Olympian,'” said Neugebauer about the season’s highlight. However, he does not feel any great pressure, the exceptional athlete told “Sportschau”: “I just do my thing and try to get better every day.”
