Among the track-and-field events on the Olympic program, the heptathlon hasn’t generated much, if any, buzz in the United States in recent years. The legendary Jackie Joyner-Kersee was the last American to win gold in the multidisciplinary sport, in which women compete in 100-m hurdles, high jump, shot put, the 200 m, long jump, javelin, and the 800 m—in that order—over a two-day period; she won consecutive Olympic titles in 1988 and 1992 and took silver at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. That’s a 32-year heptathlon-victory drought.
Anna Hall, the 23-year-old recently crowned heptathlon champ at the U.S. Olympic trials, takes her event’s lack of sizzle to heart. “A lot of people don’t know what heptathlon is when I tell them what I do,” she says. “So I definitely think there’s a small chip on my shoulder of, ‘OK, I want to show you guys that America can be good at this too.’” Hall’s very aware, she says, that taking Olympic gold is “kind of my duty, if I want to make heptathlon well-known in America.”
She may complete her task in Paris. Hall won bronze at the 2022 world championships and followed up that performance by …