Switzerland’s Simon Ehammer collected his second World Indoor title in the heptathlon, breaking the world record held by Ashton Eaton for 14 years. The Swiss totalled 6670 points in the heptathlon and set three personal bests on his way to victory. He added 25 points to Eaton’s 6645 points in Istanbul 2012.
Ehammer opened as fast as possible in a two-day venture in 60 metres with a magnificent 6.69 clocking before strengthening his position with 8.15 long jump and 14.87 shot put. United States’ Kyle Garland soars in the shot put by 16.21 metres to reduce the gap between the Swiss; however, the 24-year-old jumped 2.02 metres in the high jump and ended the day over 4800 points.
Although his over-achieving performance on the first day, the reality of a new world-record quest came to realise in the 60m hurdles. He smashed the all-time decathlon best mark in high hurdling with 7.52, which boosted his eventual aim. Ehammer endured a tough pole vault contest, escaping three times from the third-attempt failure before he reached 5.30, which was an enormous contribution to the glory. He finalised the competition with another personal best in 1000 metres - a painful run at the very end, to clock 2:41.04 as finishing fourth in the discipline, bringing his score to 6670.
"I am speechless - my dream came true," said exhausted Ehammer right after the competition, "I badly wanted to improve the European record here but it was difficult to imagine that the world record would be possible as well. I went through all of the events fighting for my goal. I fought for every single height in the pole vault.”
When arriving in Torun with 6506 points, Simon Ehammer improved his mark by more than 150 points. His gold medal gave Switzerland its sixth medal at the world indoor championships. Ehammer became the first double World champion of Swiss athletics.
