American Ashton Eaton On Being The Best Athlete On Earth And Handling ‘Traitor’ Accusations

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The last few years have been pretty good for Ashton Eaton. Since winning the decathlon as a 24-year-old at the 2012 Olympics, Eaton has been named the world’s best athlete by a number of publications, got married to Canadian athlete Brianne Theisen-Eaton, and set the world record in the decathlon at the 2015 World Championships.

In Rio, Eaton made history by becoming the third man to successfully defend a gold medal in the decathlon. He did this in record-setting fashion, as he set the Olympic record with his performance in Brazil. Oh, and Theisen-Eaton took home a bronze in the heptathlon, so 2016 has been good to track and field’s power couple.

Now that he’s done competing in Rio, Uproxx Sports caught up with Eaton and discussed life as a married man, his time in Brazil, and his promotional work with Gillette and its “Perfect Isn’t Pretty” campaign.

Bill DiFilippo: First off, how was Rio?

Ashton Eaton: It’s great. It’s…the only thing that I don’t understand is the geography. You have these beautiful beaches and water and ocean, and then all of a sudden out of nowhere there’s just these massive, jutting rock faces that come out of the ground. It’s crazy, crazy cool.

Did you have any reservations about heading down with all the negative stories we heard pre-Olympics or did you know 100 percent that you were going to go and compete?

Yeah, I knew 100 percent, no reservations. We brought mosquito repellent to wear, but we haven’t even put it on here because we haven’t seen any mosquitos.

So were, just in your experience, those stories about how hard it was down in Rio, do you think those were a bit overblown?

Yeah, absolutely.

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How was this trip different from London, both in terms of going and being there, and in terms of competing?

This trip was different from London because we knew, I think, what to expect, I guess? But I think we expected it to be the same and it was just different. Everything from the airport experience, as well. Like, as soon as we walked in the airport, there was massive amounts of USOC and USA staff there to just handle everything and I was like, “Wow, I don’t remember this in London, on the way to London.” So that was cool.

And then just getting down here, every place has its uniqueness and just something about the village and all that. In London, everything was really close by, in Rio everything was a little bit further apart as far as transportation to venues and that kind of stuff. So I thought that was gonna be an issue, but it’s gone really smoothly and it was actually kind of nice because you get to see the city a little bit.

In terms of competing, is winning gold medal no. 2 as satisfying as winning no. 1, especially considering the whole “you’re the third person to defend your gold in the decathlon” thing?

I’d say they’re about equal in satisfaction. It was just a different journey to each one. The first one was a little bit more of a surprise, I guess. I didn’t realize…I thought maybe one day I’d be able to contend for a gold medal, but I didn’t think that at 24 I would be.

This time around I was a little bit more tired, a little bit harder work the last four years to get here. So yeah, it was just different.

How would you say the work was harder to get to this point? Just, was it an expectation thing?

Maybe managing the time. Also, I was two years out of college in 2012 and those two years you’re still figuring things out, I guess. You’re not settled, in a way. But since then we’ve been settled, we’ve been at home, and so then it was just, it’s been very much of a regimented routine grind for four years, just every day coming in, training, boom boom boom boom boom. Four years, and at training, making the same mistakes, trying to overcome them, and, you know, you’re spending four years doing that. *Laughs*

But no changes. Everything was just the same the last four years.

That kind of leads into the next question: We always hear about athletes getting married and it having a huge impact on them. But you have known and been with Brianne for years, so did getting married affect your training or mindset in any way or was it, “You know, I’ve been with this person for years, it’s nothing really different”?

It was just nothing really different. If anything we got stronger as a couple.

That’s awesome, how so?

I think you are, once you’re committed to somebody, you think “Okay, if there are issues or something like that, we’re gonna stick together and fight through them.” And when you do something like track, where you have these goals and you try to push yourself, things come up where it’s, like, very frustrating at times. “I can’t figure out this event,” or this, that, or the other thing. And then you go through that with a person and you just become stronger.

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What advantages come from being married to someone else who is a world-class athlete who you can train with?

The advantages are a mutual understanding of not only what you’re trying to achieve, but what it costs to achieve what you’re trying to achieve. So if one of us wasn’t an athlete, they wouldn’t understand why we didn’t want to go to the movies or why we didn’t want to go eat a cheeseburger at a restaurant or something like that. Maybe start getting offended after this behavior over years thinking “you’re crazy, there’s no way one meal could affect your deal.”

But you kind of have to have that mindset, because if you say “ah, I’ll just have one bad meal” or whatever it is, then maybe you go down the road of having a little bit less mental strength. But when you have somebody who understands, you can bring each other along in those moments where it’s like “I feel like giving up at a practice or a workout,” and the other one is there saying, like, “No, push through this because this could be the one second that you need to medal” or whatever.

Do you find that Brianne maybe pushes you more than a coach or a teammate would because of the relationship that you two have?

I wouldn’t say more, I would just say it’s a different kind of push, a push of understanding because she is also doing the same work. So I trust that she knows what she’s saying when she says, “Just push through this, it’ll be fine.”

Some people got upset with you for wearing a Canadian hat while supporting Brianne in Rio. Like, some people were calling you a traitor, just these really ridiculous things. You responded via a few tweets, but was that something that really rubbed you the wrong way or did you get over that pretty quickly?

I think I got over it pretty quick. As far as that goes, I think it was just bad timing because it was super late at night – if you look at the tweeting, it was probably like 12:30 at night. I just finished watching Brianne’s first day of competition and she wasn’t doing very well mentally, so watching her struggle. So I was already a little bit emotional about that.

And then for somebody to call me a “traitor” for supporting my wife through this hard time after knowing what she’s been through for four years, I was like, “Look, these people are just uneducated on what the Games stand for and what I stand for.” And so maybe I should have left it, but I felt like what I said I truly believe, and I stand behind what I said. If I had children, I wouldn’t be ashamed of saying what I said around them.

Because I can imagine that, no matter what, getting called a traitor especially when you dedicate so much time to competing for your country is something that, it’s always gonna make you go, “Really? Come on.”

Yeah.

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You’re gonna be 32 in 2020. When will you make up your mind on competing in Tokyo?

I’d say probably in the next half a year.

Do you kind of have an idea of which way you’re leaning?

I would say right now there’s less than a 50 percent chance.

What are some factors that are gonna weigh into your decision down the road?

I would say kids, maybe. Just where I am mentally with the sport. I always love the sport, but there’s a difference between loving doing it like you really have to because there’s all those moments when you are like, “Why am I doing this?” And you push through because you’re like, “I love doing it!” But if I don’t anymore then I won’t do it.

As a USA athlete, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you about the Ryan Lochte/U.S. Swimming thing. Did you expect an international incident involving a few American athletes, or did that kind of catch you off guard?

I just have no comment on that.

Okay, so no Lochte partying stories that we can publish?

*Laughs* Sorry.

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All good. I understand you have a partnership with Gillette. What’s that all about?

They had a campaign that they presented to me before we went to the Games called “Perfect Isn’t Pretty.” And right from that tagline I was like, “Oh, I want to be a part of this because I totally get it.”

Getting to the end goal is never pretty, even if the end result is, and for them to want to kind of tell those stories and remind people that, look, whatever it is you’re trying to do, don’t feel like if it’s a big, hard push to get there, it’s going to be bad because that’s just how all things go. So yeah, I think my journey really speaks to that.

I’d imagine that training for something as intense as the decathlon requires a pretty strict day-to-day routine. What’s in that routine for you, and how important is it to make sure you do little things that seem rather mundane, like shaving when you have so many other things to focus on?

The little types of things like shaving or me cutting my fingernails or something I like doing, those things are important because it relieves mental distractions. So it’s really hard to explain, but you want to, in my opinion, an athlete’s goal is to get to a point where the only thing that you’re focusing on is your physical output. But sometimes there’s little things that creep in like, I don’t know, like my face feels rough or who knows what it could be. For a lady, maybe it’s like “I don’t like the way my hair is.”

When you’re on the track, or wherever you are in your venue, you just don’t want to be thinking about that stuff, so you try to control the controllables. And those are controllable things that you just kind of get done so you can go out there and perform and not have to worry about it. So yeah, those types of things, I think they’re really important as an athlete, those little tiny details that we do like double tie my shoelaces so I don’t have to think about them coming undone when I’m running or something like that.

So you’re back in the U.S. now?

No, I’m still in Rio.

Ah, okay. What’s the first thing that you’re gonna do when you get back?

Laundry. And check the mail, probably. *Laughs*

Like you said, all those little things.

Yeah.

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