UCI Decathlete Matt Farmer Has Been Training for a Long Time

Long before he could throw a javelin, lift a discus or even pronounce the word decathlete, Matt Farmer was showing the potential to become a multi-talented track and field athlete.

At age 1, Farmer completed his first timed 50-yard dash. According to his father, Dixon, Matt set an American record for his age-group (under 2) in the process.

At 2, Farmer took his first serious interest in racing--soup can racing, that is. He’d take four or five soup cans, lay them on their sides, then roll them across the floor. After he determined the winner, he’d set them up again and start over. He did this for hours at a time.

“He’d cheer them on and talk to them as they rolled,” his father said. “We thought it a little unusual, but it gave us an indication he was a competitor.”

Seventeen years later, that indication continues to ring true.

Farmer, who will be a sophomore at UC Irvine this fall, is one of the top junior decathletes in the nation. He will compete in the USA-Canada Decathlon Dual Meet today and Sunday at Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

The meet features the top four junior (age 19 and under) and top six senior (over 19) decathletes (1988 Olympians excluded) from the United States and Canada. The combined scores of both junior and senior teams will determine the winner between the two nations.

Farmer, who graduated from Monte Vista High School in La Mesa, earned a berth on the junior team after he won the decathlon at the U.S. Junior Track and Field Championships June 24 at Tallahassee, Fla.

Farmer’s total of 7,015 points was a personal best by 235 points. His first-day total--3,836 points--set a national junior record for the first five events.

The U.S.-Canada meet will be the end of a long season for Farmer. Since March, he has competed in one decathlon a month, a schedule that some might consider too taxing. Still, Farmer has improved his score an average of 150 points in each competition since March, and 800 points since last year.

The only hitch in his success occurred late last month during the World Junior Championships at Sudbury, Ontario. Several days before the meet, Farmer tore ligaments in his left ankle--his jumping ankle--during a pole vault workout. After four events, Farmer, barely able to walk, dropped out of the competition.

“It was a really hard thing for me to do,” Farmer said. “I’ve done 13 decathlons, and I pride myself on the fact that I’ve finished them all--until Sudbury. During the 1,500 meters (the final event), I sat there watching and cried through the whole thing.”

Perhaps the reason Farmer had such a difficult time dropping out is that he has been at this game so long.

The son of a collegiate track coach, Farmer grew up around the track, flopping on the high jump mats and soaking in the athletic atmosphere that surrounded him.

Dixon Farmer, the California state prep champion at 440 yards in 1958 and ‘59, was an NCAA champion in the 440 intermediate hurdles while attending Occidental College. Then he started a 24-year career coaching college track and cross-country.

“It was almost inevitable (that Matt would become a track athlete),” said Dixon Farmer, formerly the men’s track coach at San Diego State and now a sales manager for an Italian-based company that makes track surfaces.

“The athletes were always around the house. They were his role models. He grew up with the sport.”

It was at Occidental that Farmer set his “American record” for 1-year-olds.

(Track & Field News statistician Jack Sheppard said the magazine did compile such records during the early ‘70s but has since stopped publishing them. Said Sheppard: “It was getting a bit ridiculous, especially when fathers started sending in javelin marks for their 2-year-olds.”)

Dixon said that after his son watched so much track in the first 1 1/2 years of his life, he “evidenced an interest to do something on the track himself.”

“We looked through an age-group record book to find which record (for age 1) seemed the easiest to break, and it was the 50-yard dash,” Dixon said. “So after a track meet, we got out the starter’s pistol, and got a few guys on the team to pace him. They ran backwards down the track, trying to coax him in the right direction.”

The time?

A time of “26.7 (seconds) stands in my mind, but I’m not exactly sure,” Dixon said.

Though one might think Matt Farmer had a great advantage as a decathlete by being the son of a track coach, Dixon firmly disagrees.

“I think he makes his own advantages,” he said. “Sure, the environment was here for Matt in track and field, but the commitment and the devotion to the sport is all his. When it comes right down to the physical pain, that sacrifice can only be made by the athlete.”

Matt Farmer, who grew up in Woodenville, Wash., 15 miles east of Seattle, said that although he played golf, baseball and basketball, he felt cross-country and track were always better sports for him.

In track, Farmer set a Washington state record for fourth-graders in the high jump at 5-feet 2-inches, his height at the time. He completed his first decathlon in seventh grade, pole vaulting 4-6 in the process.

In 1981, Dixon Farmer accepted the coaching job at SDSU, and the family moved to San Diego. At Monte Vista High, Matt starred in the long jump, high jump and triple jump.

As a senior, Farmer was named athlete of the meet at the 1987 San Diego Section finals. He won the long jump (23-10) and the high jump (6-8), and took second in the triple jump (47-10 3/4).

It was, he said, “the most amazing day I could ever ask for.”

Though Farmer often asks a lot of himself, he says he would never become obsessed with the one goal that hangs over so many athletes’ heads--making an Olympic team. And his father almost groans when he hears the word: “Everybody who puts on a pair of shoes is training for the Olympics,” Dixon said, somewhat sarcastically.

Matt Farmer agreed.

“It’s such a trendy thing to say right now, that you’re training for 1992,” he said. “Of course it’s a long-range goal for me, but first, there’s qualifying for the NCAAs, then competing at the NCAAs, and (academics). . .”

So what does Farmer hope for in his future?

More points in the decathlon, for one. A career in sportswriting, for another. But also . . .

“I want to be one of those guys who doesn’t stay in the sport too long,” he said. “One that knows when to come out when he’s hurting. My calling age will probably be 28 or so. I don’t want to be a 35-year-old track-and-field junkie, hanging out all day at the track.

“I love sports, but I want to stay within myself.”