With all boxes checked, Eaton moves to next phase

By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor

I didn’t try to reach Ashton Eaton by phone Wednesday, in part, because he is so polite he probably would have taken the call.  

After tweeting that he has retired from track and field, along with his wife Brianne Theisen-Eaton, Ashton spent time replying to lots of well-wishers throughout the day.  

I don’t have any questions for Ashton. Over the course of 11 years, going back to the first time I met him when he was a senior at Mountain View High School in Bend, Ore. he has answered all of the questions. Now I’m trying to remember and cherish all of them. 

When I’ve encountered Ashton at Hayward Field in Eugene or at The Armory in New York, he never seemed liked the greatest athlete in the world because he never called himself that. It’s sort of like how Bruce Springsteen doesn't like to be called “The Boss.” Deep down, he just is. 

I’m going to be honest. Eleven years ago when I first saw him at the Oregon state high school championships, wearing the red and black of Mountain View's Cougars, he struck me as an impressive long jumper and long sprinter (200/400). He was certainly worthy of a Division I track scholarship. He was powerful and agile and seemed to truly enjoy the experience of winning state titles.  

But as a long jumper, he was no Jordan Kent. And as a sprinter, he was no Nate Anderson. Those recent high school grads were the best in state history.

A year later, when Ashton began dabbling with the multis at the University of Oregon, that’s when, suddenly, you couldn’t take your eyes off him. Ashton would try something for the first time in competition – like the pole vault or the high jump or the javelin – and then a week later he would do it again 10 times better.  

I was lucky to cover high school sports at The Oregonian newspaper at a time when the state produced, arguably, the best athletes it had ever seen in a variety of sports. Football: Ndaumkong Suh. Basketball: Kevin Love. Baseball: Jacoby Ellsbury. Distance running: Galen Rupp. Throwing: Sam and Ryan Crouser.  

We didn’t know back then that Ashton Eaton would exceed all of them and become one of the greatest Olympic athletes of all-time.  

I have pondered Ashton for the past decade. Are there more athletic diamonds out there, like him, waiting for a Tate Metcalf or Dan Steele to take notice of something special and flip the switch on? Is Ashton’s combination of body awareness, strength, fearlessness and ingenuity unique among the six billion inhabitants of our planet? And if so, how in the world could he have come from LaPine and Bend? 

Great beer comes from Bend. Before that, great fishing and even better skiing. The city’s population has boomed in the past decade and is now close to 90,000. When Ashton was born (in Portland) in 1988, Bend had a little more than 20,000 residents. 

Raised by a single mother, Roslyn Eaton, Ashton was always athletic and found outlets in a variety of sports in a community that emphasizes recreation and active lifestyles.  

For that community to produce the only man to ever long jump 27 feet and pole vault 17 feet? And run 45-flat in the 400? That’s a demographics head scratcher, only made more absurd by the fact that Dan O’Brien grew up 140 miles due south in Klamath Falls. 

It’s precisely because it was Bend, and a coach like Metcalf, that the idea of pursuing decathlon was floated to Ashton instead of college football.   

The raw ability to jump and run earned Aston a chance to go to the University of Oregon. In the second recruiting class of the program rebuild by coach Vin Lananna, Ashton was one of a handful of multi-event prospects. Andrew Wheating was part of the recruiting class and so were A.J. Acosta, Chad Barlow, Ryan Waite and Kenny Klotz. A year later, Matthew Centrowitz was in the mix.  

On a team where Olympic aspirations permeated nearly every locker, Ashton’s natural instincts for testing his limits and perfecting his craft got traction and continued to progress with coach Steele and later (in 2009) with Harry Marra. He scored 6,977 points in his first decathlon in March 2007. It took him three years to break his first world record in the indoor heptathlon and another two years to break the decathlon world record at the 2012 Olympic Trials.

Something else happened in Ashton’s freshman year that was a stroke of good fortune. Oregon recruited Canadian heptathlete Brianne Theisen and he met her when she visited Eugene in the fall of 2006. The following summer, in Brazil at the Pan Am Junior Championships, Ashton and Brianne re-connected and a relationship was born.. 

Over the next year, Ashton and Brianne grew closer and sparked a romance that would become one of the most successful partnerships in the sport of track and field. Ashton possessed boundless raw ability and was trying to perfect 10 different tricks. Brianne was fiercely competitive and strong willed. They balanced each other and they made each other better.  

Ashton cared more about being a better version of himself than beating other people. He was gracious beyond what anyone could expect. He deflected as much of the spotlight as possible onto his slightly less talented competitors. After winning the Olympic Trials decathlon in June, he refused to answer more than two questions in a press conference until someone asked something of the second- and third-place finishers.  

Ashton was also willing, when necessary, to carry the torch. When the IAAF World Indoor Championships came to Portland last March, natives Rupp and Ryan Bailey didn’t make the team. Ashton, of course, did. And his face was plastered all over the city in order to raise awareness for an event with almost no precedent in Portland. 

He was front and center, doing the interviews for local media, thanking the fans for coming to the Oregon Convention Center, rooting for his wife’s drive for a first global gold medal, and of course, winning his competition.

In his “Valedictory” statement on his Web site Wednesday, Ashton wrote that 10 years seemed fitting. Ten years is a long time to train and strive and ask for everything possible out of your body in order to remain the world’s best athlete over a schedule of 10 events. But from the outside, it seemed to go by in a blur. 

His contributions now, however he decides to make them, will be more cerebral than athletic. Ashton was always thoughtful, pausing to think before he spoke. There is no doubt that the post-athletic career plan has been sketched out. He and Brianne will likely move out of Eugene. They will likely have kids and some of them might be really athletic. And they will apply themselves to something they believe in, the same way they did in track and field. 

On the field for a decade, Ashton evolved from someone eager to discover what he could do to an athlete with nothing left to prove. Off the field, he has been an example of the human being you can aspire to be with a little practice.

Ashton Eaton leaves the sport better than he found it and his true impact on the world is just getting started.