Dan O'Brien

Daniel Dion O'Brien, known as Dan O'Brien, is an American former decathlete and Olympic gold medalist, born on 18 July 1966 in Portland, Oregon. He grew up as an adopted child in an Irish-American family in Klamath Falls and competed for the University of Idaho. He won three consecutive world championship titles in 1991, 1993 and 1995 and set the world record of 8,891 points in Talence, France in September 1992, a mark that stood until 1999 and was the American record until Ashton Eaton broke it in 2012. After a failed pole vault at the 1992 U.S. Olympic Trials kept him off the Barcelona team, a moment that drew wide attention because of the Dan and Dave advertising campaign for Reebok, he won the Olympic title in Atlanta in 1996 with 8,824 points. He announced his retirement from the decathlon on 8 July 2004.