Men's Heptathlon

The indoor programme drops four of the decathlon's outdoor events and reshapes the rest. Day one runs the 60 metres, long jump, shot put and high jump; day two opens with the 60 metres hurdles, adds the pole vault, and closes with a 1000 metres in place of the outdoor 1500. There is no discus or javelin — the indoor arena has no room for them.

Because the sprints are shorter and there are fewer events, the indoor heptathlon plays a little faster and more explosively than the decathlon, but the same logic holds: the athlete who avoids a weak event usually wins.

The world indoor record sits in the high 6400s; for many decathletes the heptathlon is a sharpening exercise for the outdoor season, and a total in the low-to-mid 6000s is already championship class.

World Athletics scores every mark with the same shape of formula. For a track event — where a faster time is better — the points are A × (B − T)^C, with T your time in seconds. For a field event — where farther or higher is better — they are A × (M − B)^C, with M your distance in metres. A, B and C are published constants tuned for each event; the result is rounded down to a whole number and never drops below zero.

Add the 7 event scores together and you have the total. The tables are progressive: the closer a mark gets to world-record level, the more each extra centimetre or hundredth of a second is worth — so a balanced athlete who scores well everywhere usually beats a specialist with one huge event and an obvious weak spot.