Australia has had a double-medal finish in the men’s decathlon for the first time in a century in an extraordinary end to the event on Saturday morning (AEST).
Daniel Golubovic and Cedric Dubler fell agonizingly short as they desperately tried to steal the gold medal from Grenada’s Victor Lindon in the final 1500m run.
Dubler, a national hero from his viral act of mateship during at the Tokyo Olympics, went into the final night session with a lead of 39 points with only the javelin and 1500m to go.
However, he was brought undone by a fifth place finish in the javelin and simply had too many points to try and catch up in the 1500m.
Golubovic put together a colossal effort in the final event, crossing the finish line first to take the silver medal with a final score of 8197 points.
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Lindon was more than 100m behind Golubovic as the Aussie crossed the line.
With the Grenadian looking dead on his feet with 25m to run, it suddenly appeared that Golubovic was about to take the gold. He needed to win by more than 23 seconds.
However, Lindon fell over the line with two seconds to spare. Dubler, who took the bronze medal, Golubovic and Lindon were all left waiting to see the exact results show up on the big screen before they could learn who had won the gold medal.
It eventually showed up on the screen that Lindon had done enough to fall over the line with a final score of 8233. Dubler finished with 8030.
Golubovic was smiling through the heartbreak at the end of the race.
“Thank you, I had to dig for that,” Golubovic said afterwards.
“It is cold out here and there is nothing in the works. Two decathlons in 12 days – I don’t recommend it.
“It’s been an incredible experience, coming down and moving back to Australia and back to Brisbane during COVID, it’s been a wild few years and it’s been a long process to get here. It feels so good to be on this stage right now.
He said he is looking forward to getting some sleep after completing two decathlon events in the space of two weeks, after also competing at the world championships in Oregon last month.
“Tired. Very tired,” he said when asked how he felt in an interview with Channel 7.
“It was a tough race, I knew it was going to be, I had to leave everything out on the line and we did just that, that was every possible thing I could leave out on the track, and it landed where it did, but I am so incredibly proud to have performed the way I did and backed it up two times in a row and to have it come down to the 1500 was a lot of fun.”
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