Which animal could WIN the human decathlon?

I may have been a bit conservative with the cheetah's 1500m, unfortunately even an incredible 1500, like the NA area 7-furlong thoroughbred mark of 1:26, is still only worth 2386 points. That's on pace to get to 9126 in just 4 events. However the horse that ran 1:26 isn't gonna be near the 20 flat 400 a quarter horse can do.

I can't find any real measurement of a race horse over 100m, only horse racing enthusiasts repeating what their top speed is. Do they not understand about acceleration? In any case, I bet most horses are slower than 6 seconds for 100m FAT, and a pure jumping horse will probably be very slow.

The steeplechase horses could probably score around 2000 in the flat events, plus 2.5m high jump and a valid long jump worth somewhere above 1000 each. Could they be trained to legally complete the 110h for 1000 points or more?

But then there's the question of needing a human rider. If a dog could do as well unassisted, that's more legit IMHO. Dogs seem to take about 25 seconds for 400m. Racing dogs are already trained for hurdles. Like with horses, I can't find any serious clocking over 100m

Belgian malinois is scoring in the sprints, hurdles, and jumps for sure. I just watched a lady playing fetch with her Belgian but she was tossing it over a 5ft tall chain link fence that the dog hopped over at least six times in the 5 minutes I was watching.

A horse is way faster over 7 furlongs than 1:26. Why did you pick that distance? Why not just use the mile?

Gonna be hard to throw the shot and disc with paws.

A cheetah would win the 100m a horse the 400/1500. Other than that what a ridiculous idea.

Humans are animals, so definitely can score points in throws and pv.

As for non-human animals? Interesting question… gonna go with whatever species of trainable bird. Near infinite score on high jump and long jump. Depending on rules they’re killing it on 100m, 400m, 1500m, hurdles. Doesn’t matter the no points on throws or pv.

A Rüppell's griffon vulture clear a height of 11,300 meters. If my math is right, that gives them a score of 333,393,723 for the high jump.

I meant 7 1/2 furlongs. The North American record for that is 1:26. Very close to 1500m.

Give em a 1:25 for the extra few Imperial meters, but again that horse is not running 20 flat for 400, and I don't believe the 20 flat quarter horse gets near 1:25 either. Or any horse matches a greyhound or cheetah over 100m. Especially if it can jump. Horse breeders are really specific in what traits they develop, at the exclusion of others.

Silver back

Being a bird is cheating.

But they would max out the measuring equipment in any case. Noone is going to follow a bird 10 miles to measure its "long jump."

Silver back

Bearcat?

God this is an idiotic thread.

I don't know who Noone is, but it's nice of him/her to follow the bird all that way.

Why is being a bird cheating? I assume you mean flying is cheating, which I could understand, although that wasn’t specified originally.

If you prefer not to include flying, then an ostrich wouldn’t be too bad at 100-400-1500, hurdles, long jump, and high jump.

Don’t be so hard on birds, man.

Gorilla.

I reckon if you raised one from birth with those cruel circus folks, they could train it to throw and do the pole vault also.

Easy, Red Kangaroo.

I guess you've never heard of Dr. Fager.

Fine, yes, an ostrich can participate. And other birds as long as they do not fly. Flying is cheating. A flight is technically not a jump. A jump means you go up and then come back down, no staying up in the air through aerodynamic means.

An ostrich could do pretty well at the running, but I hesitate to bet on its completing a legal jump.

The serious part of this thread is whether an animal could be trained to complete, on its own, 4 events at ~2300 point level, or 5 at ~1850 average level. This is not a given. A horse would surely need real-time direction from a human, which violates coaching rules. A dog could possibly do it, but we don't know all the dog world records.

It's an open question how high or far a racing dog could jump. It might need points from a jump, besides the runs.