'Decathlon' was coined from Greek 'ten contests' for the 1912 Olympics — the complete athlete's test.
An athletic contest comprising ten different track-and-field events, held over two consecutive days; the winner is considered the greatest all-around athlete.
Coined for the 1912 Stockholm Olympics from Greek 'deka' (ten) + 'athlos' (contest, struggle), on the model of 'pentathlon' (five contests). Greek 'deka' descends from PIE *dekm (ten), one of the most stable words in the Indo-European family. The decathlon was designed to find the complete athlete — one who could run, jump, throw, and vault across ten different disciplines. The word is a modern neologism
The decathlon was invented for the 1912 Olympics and was immediately won by Jim Thorpe, who was later stripped of his medals because he had earned small sums playing semi-professional baseball. King Gustav V of Sweden told Thorpe, 'You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world.' Thorpe's medals were posthumously restored in 1983.
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