The unthinkable was about to happen. Britain's golden boy walked to the concrete discus circle knowing that he was throwing for his life, his reputation, his dreams. It was not just the Los Angeles smog that was suffocating the athletes in the Memorial Coliseum. Daley Thompson was a man under pressure.
It all seemed like business as usual after six events in the 1984 Olympic Decathlon. Thompson had managed to build a lead over his great rival Jurgen Hingsen, stamping his authority on the competition from the start. The West German may have arrived in Los Angeles as the world record holder, but when it came to competition, there was no one like Daley.
Olympic champion in 1980; European champion in 1982; twice Commonwealth winner; gold medalist at the inaugural World Championships the year before LA. It was little wonder that the endorsements associated with winning flooded towards Thompson. To many, Thompson was someone who made Lucozade cool and a man who would help maintain the computer joystick industry for years to come.
Often the hype can get to an athlete's head, as they take their eye off the ball - Rocky Balboa suffering at the hands of Clubber Lang is the obvious example of this - but Thompson was never going to fall into this trap. Famously dedicated to his sport - he would train 350 days a year, including Christmas day - Thompson was driven, determined to stay ahead of Hingsen.
The Thompson-Hingsen contest was undoubtedly one of the highlights of the 1984 Olympics. Indeed it was one of the defining sporting rivalries of the decade. It helped that both men seemed so different - just like Borg/McEnroe and Coe/Ovett - with the cocky, confident Thompson pitted against the reserved and mechanical Hingsen.
The West German, a 6ft 7ins model of awesome wonder, was speaking a good game as the athletes arrived in LA. "Daley Thompson no longer scares me. In the past I admit he did. But not now. I am better than him in all but two of the ten disciplines of the Decathlon."
Thompson responded. "Every time Hingsen comes to one of the big events he boasts about what he's going to do to me. I'm glad he's here because it helps lift me up. But he doesn't concern me. Compared with him I am a dwarf - but one who packs a mighty punch."
The battle lines had been drawn. But if the British public were concerned that the West German record holder would finally topple Thompson then the first day put those doubts to bed. Clocking a personal best of 10.44 in the 100m, Thompson then produced another PB in the long jump. Thompson's 8.01m leap was so good that it would have seen him finish 5th in the men's long jump final.
Trailing by 164 points, Hingsen was expected to claw back some of the deficit during the shot put. He would only gain nine points - Hingsen throwing 15.87m to Thompson's 15.72m - as another Thompson PB threatened to crush the spirit of his rival. Despite leaving the arena with a knee injury, Hingsen did at least manage to make up 77 points in the high jump.
Yet Thompson came back strongly, his 400m run of 46.97 adding another 36 points to his lead over Hingsen. After day one, Thompson held an advantage of 114 points, and when Hingsen only gained four points in the 110m hurdles that opened day two, Thompson had one foot on the highest step of the rostrum.
Which brings us full (concrete) circle back to the pivotal seventh event of the decathlon. Which discipline proved to be the key to the outcome of the 1984 Olympics? Discus. That poor joke aside, Thompson's first two efforts of 37.90m and 41.24m were way down on what he was expected to throw. When Hingsen landed a personal best of 50.82m, Thompson was standing on the edge of a disaster.
Cometh the hour and all that. In what Thompson would later describe as the best and worst moment of his life, he stood in the circle and knew this was an occasion he was made for. All the training, all the sacrifices, all this pressure. Could he respond?
"It's a better one, it's a better one, it's a better one, IT'S A BETTER ONE!" yelled the BBC commentator Ron Pickering, as he perfectly described the joy and sense of relief after Thompson's personal best throw of 46.56m. The man simply possessed balls the size of shot puts. Dancing a jig of delight in the circle, Thompson had delivered right when it mattered.
Thompson may have lost 76 points to Hingsen in the discus, yet the psychological gain was much greater. Hingsen would have led by 68 points had Thompson failed with his last throw. But Thompson's effort must have been a body blow to the German, like conceding a last minute winner in a smash and grab.
"The crowd shed their chauvinism in the realisation that here was a rather special competitor of the 23rd Olympiad," John Rodda wrote in the Guardian, describing the discus moment that confirmed Thompson's brilliance. Hingsen must have felt sick. During the pole vault event, he actually was, leaving the track to throw up.
Performing a back flip on the mat on his way to clearing 5.00m in the pole vault - Hingsen was half a metre down on this mark - Thompson then threw the javelin 65.24m (Hingsen 60.44m) to open up an unbeatable lead of 210 points. Thompson's 1500m was 0.1 seconds outside the time needed to set a new world record - although retrospectively he was awarded this due to a revised 110m hurdles time - but he later admitted he had lost some drive once he knew Hingsen was beaten.
Thompson's gold was naturally celebrated in the UK, after all this was a games where only five golds were won, even with the absence of many of the Communist countries. Described as the greatest athlete in the world - no arguments from Thompson on that one - here was a man who had cemented his legendary status.
Being Daley he then of course caused controversy. Whistling the national anthem was frowned upon; wearing a T-Shirt asking “Is the world’s 2nd greatest athlete gay?” in a clear dig at Carl Lewis was unnecessary; his comments about his conversation with Princess Anne - "She said I'm a damn good looking guy" and describing potentially having children with the royal - were jokes, but misguided ones.
Informing US viewers that "I haven’t been this happy since my granny caught her tit in a mangle," was another case of Daley speaking before engaging his brain - the US stations bleeped out the offending tit word - but in truth this was all part of the package that made Thompson so loveable.
Look at Daley's face at the end of the fantastic BBC Gold montage. Beaming with joy, holding his medal for all to see, he proclaims "I've got the big G boys, the big G". To sports fans growing up in the 1980s, here was a man from another planet, an icon of his age, a hero we were so lucky to have watched. I will even forgive him for inadvertently costing me a fortune in joysticks.
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1988 Olympics: Daley Thompson
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