In 1982, decathlete Francis Morgan Ayodélé Thompson, universally known as Daley Thompson, was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year, ahead of snooker player Alex Higgins and athlete Steve Cram. Never one to shy away from controversy, Thompson turned up at the awards ceremony dressed more casually than might have been expected and, having received the trophy from a suitably tuxedoed Sir Garfield Sobers, began his acceptance speech with the immortal words, “The first thing I’d like to say is that I feel like shit,” feigning shock as he did so.
Controversy or not, few could argue that Thompson fully deserved the accolade. Having won the gold medal in the decathlon at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow with a total of 8,495 points, he raised the world record to 8,730 in Götzis, Austria in May 1982 and in September, at the European Athletics Championships in Athens, Greece, did so again, this time to 8,774 points. In October, he also won the gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane, thereby ending 1982 as the Olympic, European and Commonwealth champion and the world record holder.
Widely hailed as the greatest all-round athlete of his era, if not of all time, Thompson went on to win gold at the inaugural World Athletics Championships in Helsinki in 1983 and to defend his title at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. On the latter occasion, he was retrospectively awarded a joint world record, 8,798 points, alongside previous holder Jurgen Hingsen, under the original scoring tables employed by the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) and the world record outright based on the revised tables which took effect in April 1985.
Thompson was finally forced into retirement by a recurring hamstring injury in 1992, having finished ninth at the World Athletics Championships in Rome in 1987 and fourth at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. However, it should not be forgotten that in his heyday he remained unbeaten in the decathlon for nine years, from 1978 to 1987. Reflecting on past glories, Thompson said recently, “Me and the bloke in the moustache are forty years apart. I think I’m a completely different person.”