27 Jul 2025

Wild Guse chase: Australian sets nine personal bests to grab decathlon gold

BOCHUM – Ten events, nine personal best performances – Australian Benjamin Guse (AUS) produced the performance of his life to grab gold in the decathlon at the Rhine-Ruhr 2025 FISU World University Games on Saturday.

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It was a stunning display of dominance that silver medallist Aleksi Oskari Leonard Savolainen (FIN) – all of 299 points behind – was grateful to witness from the best seat in the house.

“It was absolutely amazing,” a smiling Savolainen told the FISU Games News Service (FGNS) after stepping off the track at Lohrheidestadion. “I can’t understand how he is doing that. He is so rare, I haven’t seen anything like this before. It’s just impossible to keep up with.”

‘UNHEARD OF’

The numbers behind Guse’s final score of 7,918 points – an overall personal best by a vast 343 points – make for remarkable reading.

The decathlon is generally built on consistency, with a parade of solid scores across the 10 events usually good enough to get the job done. But there was little of that for Guse.

In three events he topped the standings – leaping to 7.42 metres in the long jump on day one, throwing 61.53m in the javelin on day two and then powering to a time of 4 minutes, 31.78 seconds in the final event, the 1500m. Twice he was second best (in the discus and 400m) and only once did he finish outside the top five, when his 14.86 seconds was the eighth quickest time in the 110m hurdles.

It was an overall effort that rival and roommate Sebastian Reyneke (AUS) described as “unheard of in a decathlon at this level”.

The man himself could only agree.

“Nine out of 10 PBs is pretty unheard of,” Guse said to the FGNS, unable to stop a smile spreading across his face. “To only miss one. I’m not disappointed. I’m over the moon.

“I was probably expecting like a 7,700, maybe pushing a 7,800, if all things went really well. So to come away with 7,900 (plus). We were even talking about whether 8,000 was on the table, and that would have been absurd.”

‘JUST NUTS’

The 22-year-old, who only failed to register a best-ever result in the pole vault, found it predictably hard to pick out a favourite performance.

“Maybe the 400m. That was a big breakthrough. That was like a 1.2-second PB. But also that 1500m was crazy as well,” he said, before going into more detail on that gruelling closing event.

“The original PB was 4:41 and I wanted to get into the 4:30s and try and get a 4:35 maybe. But the pacing went out the window. After about 400 metres, I lost track of my pacing. Then I just started working off the other boys who were ahead of me and brought it home strong. I couldn’t believe it: 4:31.78 – a 10-second PB. Just nuts.”

PERFECT 10

Naturally, the reigning Australian champion had to address the elephant in the room: what went wrong with the pole vault?

“It’s not like it went badly or anything,” Guse said with a big laugh.

He is right. His effort of 4.40m was the equal fourth highest in the competition – and just 10cm below his best. Not even his coach, Annette Rice – up in the early hours back home in Australia watching her charge perform – could complain about that.

“I’ve been messaging her throughout the weekend, and she was over the moon with how I was going, messaging me about the results,” Guse confirmed.

Despite it all, Guse said that celebrations will be limited to “sleeping”. After all, he has a pole vault to work on.

“I think as decathletes you’re always chasing that perfect 10 events,” Guse said. “It’s inevitable that you never will get the perfect 10. But I think that’s what makes decathletes unique.

“We keep showing up day in, day out, always trying to get that perfect decathlon together.”

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