Decathlete

Simply to see what would happen, Paul Terek, a United States decathlete, wore a baseball cap bearing his name in Japanese when he landed at the Osaka airport a few weeks ago. Some children there took the bait.

“Heptathlon is very geared and favorable to those who are quick,” said Gray’s coach, Andy Eggerth, who trains both heptathletes and decathletes. “A lot of world-class heptathletes are relatively bad at javelin and shot-put.”