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But Thompson never jokes about the decathlon. He is his own coach and does not have a fool for a pupil. He claims that he revels in the rigors of the training; competition is dessert. "I sound rather eccentric, don't I?" he asks rhetorically. "No, when you're rich you're eccentric, when you're poor you're mad. So I'm mad." Thompson grew up poor and angry. He is the son of a Nigerian British immigrant who died when Daley was twelve and a Scottish mother who sent him at age seven to a school for problem children where track offered the chance to run away from trouble. His nickname is a shortened version of Ayodele, the African name his father gave him, which means "Joy comes home." His home, day in, year out, is the track. His joy, publicly expressed, will be privately savored. Says he: "There is a feeling that one who performs in public becomes a public property. I do not believe that." Daley is adored from afar, the distance he likes best. He plans to rest now for a year, then tram for a try at a third gold in 1988. The world record, he said at his celebratory press conference, "would have been nice. But all I wanted to do was win." While the gold was enough, it turns out he will have the record too. A new weighting of decathlon points has been adopted for next year; under that future tally, Thompson's performance will earn him the world record. So on Jan. 1, without even lacing up his track shoes, Thompson, the most Irreverent decathlete of all tune, will become the undisputed greatest decathlete of all time. —By Richard Stengel.
Reported by Melissa Ludtke/Los Angeles