Pino Pilotto endures double-difficult indoor multi in Helsinki

Masters statman and blog regular Pino Pilotto of Switzerland, a masters multi-eventer (oops! combined-eventer), is one of my heroes. Not because he excels, but because he tries. Like my friend Dr. Richard Watson of Yuma — who will enter a dec at the drop of a hat — Pino loves to do as many events as possible. He took 10th in the Lahti M55 decathlon. But that was just a warmup for what he did April 10-11 in Helsinki — an indoor tetradecathlon (which Pino thinks should be labeled the tesseradecathlon). That’s 14 events over two days, double the normal. Despite a case of thrombophlebitis, Pino won his age group. (Results are here.) Here’s a snippet of Pino (shot by Rauno Möttönen) as a weight thrower — hitting the wall as it were:

Pino added some details about the Helsinki event:

The ultra multi-event competition indoor held in Helsinki, the 10 and 11 avril 2010, was the fourth. It is the third time that I compete. The other years the competition was held in one day; this year it was held in two days (as it has to be).

Risto Karasmaa, M55, is the inventor of the ultra multi events. And he also competed in the class M55.

This is the website of the multi events:
http://www.icosathlon.net/

And these are the results of the indoor-tetradecathlon (in my opinion the word tetradecathlon is wrong: for my understanding it means 40 events -– I would call it tesseradecathlon: in my understanding it means 14 events, but anyway).
http://www.icosathlon.net/results/helsinki2010.txt

You see also participants from the USA.

The M55 was, beside the open class, the most international class LOL.

I won by only 33 points (about 35 seconds in the 5000m).

The points are calculated with the WMA points (except the events that are not in the WMA schedules, for which Risto Karasmaa makes extra schedules). Risto Karasmaa think about to change-it also in the new “WMA 2010”, but it would be a hard work, because many of the multi events are not in the 2010-schedules of Rehpennig/WMA (for example the 3000m, the triple jump, the 5000m, the 10000, the 200 hurdles and so on) and so maybe he let it be.

By the way: The record holder in the indoor-tetradecathlon M55 is (American) Brant Tolsma.

And the record holder in the icosathlon open class: (20 events) is: Kip Janvrin!

Here’s Pino in the 1500:

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April 21, 2010

9 Responses

  1. John - April 21, 2010

    “That’s 14 events over two days, double the normal.”

    So how is 14 events over 2 days considered double the normal of 10 events over 2 days?

  2. pino pilotto - April 21, 2010

    The normal INDOOR combined event is a heptathlon (Seven – Epta); the double of 7 is 14 (Fourteen – Deka Tessera)
    The normal OUTDOOR combined event is a decathlon (Ten – Deka); the double of 10 is 20 (Twenty – Ikosi)

  3. tnoyes - April 21, 2010

    Our usage of Greek has tetra-deca = 4+10, just as four-teen is 4+10. I don’t think we use the ‘tessara’ variation of tetra.

    Either way, it’s a crazy number of events.

  4. Tom Phillips - April 21, 2010

    This guy is my hero! Not only can he do it, but he can do it in Greek.

  5. Tom Fahey - April 21, 2010

    He pendulates the weight very well.

  6. pino pilotto - April 21, 2010

    Thank you, “tnoyes”

    You know better then I what “pino” means in Greek, so you will understand my error and maybe forgive me…;-)

  7. Weia Reinboud - April 21, 2010

    Isn’t it tessarakaideka or tetrakaideka?

  8. Weia Reinboud - April 21, 2010

    Both, and tetradeka seems to be correct too… New Greek dekatessera

  9. Adam - April 24, 2010

    The normal INDOOR combined event is a heptathlon (Seven – Epta); the double of 7 is 14 (Fourteen – Deka Tessera)
    The normal OUTDOOR combined event is a decathlon (Ten – Deka); the double of 10 is 20 (Twenty – Ikosi)

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