Brianne Theisen-Eaton

Brianne Theisen-Eaton

Personal information
Nationality	Canadian
Born	(1988-12-18) 18 December 1988 Humboldt, Saskatchewan[1]
Residence	Eugene, Oregon
Height	1.72 m (5 ft 7 1⁄2 in)
Weight	62 kg (137 lb)
Sport
Country	Canada
Sport	Athletics
Event(s)	Heptathlon
Achievements and titles
Personal best(s)	Heptathlon: 6530 points, Moscow, 2013[2] Pentathlon: 4555 points NR, College Station, 2012
Medal record World Championships Silver 2013 Moscow Heptathlon

Brianne Theisen-Eaton (born 18 December 1988) is a Canadian track and field athlete who competes in the heptathlon and women's pentathlon. She was the Canadian heptathlon champion in 2009 and represented her country at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics. She holds the Canadian record for the indoor pentathlon with her score of 4555 points. At the 2013 World Championships Theisen-Eaton won a silver medal, this was the first medal for a Canadian woman in the multi-events at the World Championships.^[3] It also represented the first time Canadians won medals in both the men's and women's editions of the multi-events as Damian Warner also won a bronze medal in the Decathlon.

A national junior champion in 2006, she took the heptathlon gold medal at the Pan American Junior Championships the following year. She enrolled at the University of Oregon and broke a number of school records in her first three years, winning back-to-back NCAA heptathlon titles in 2009 and 2010. She has also won twice at the NCAA Indoor Championship, including a collegiate pentathlon record in 2011.

Career

Early life

She was raised in Humboldt, Saskatchewan and attended Humboldt Collegiate Institute. While at high school she took part in track and field, volleyball and soccer.^[4] She found her niche in the track and field combined events and represented Canada at the 2005 World Youth Championships in Athletics, coming seventeenth in the girl's heptathlon.^[5] She was the national junior champion in the heptathlon in 2006 and took part in the 2006 World Junior Championships in Athletics in Beijing.^[2] In her senior year at high school she won the gold medal at the 2007 Pan American Junior Championships.^[6]

College athletics

She received a sports scholarship at the University of Oregon, where she started a major in business administration in late 2007. In her first year she was the runner-up at the Pac-10 championships and came fourth in the heptathlon at the NCAA Women's Outdoor Track and Field Championship. Theisen began her second year with a third place finish in the pentathlon at the NCAA Women's Indoor Track and Field Championship. The outdoor season saw her establish herself among the world elite in the heptathlon. She won the Pac-10 title, then set a personal record of 6086 points to win her first NCAA outdoor title, before finally going on to take the national heptathlon title that summer.^[4] This earned her a spot on the national team to make her senior international debut at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics. As Canada's only representative in the event, she came in fifteenth place.^[7] In addition to her athletic breakthrough, she also received a mention for All-Academic honours that year.^[4]

Theisen continued her strong college form into the following year, winning her first pentathlon title at the 2010 NCAA Indoors with 4396 points and repeating as the Pac-10 Outdoor heptathlon champion.^[4] She also took a second consecutive victory at the NCAA Outdoors, improving her personal record to 6094 points.^[8] This total ranked her within the top twenty athletes in her discipline worldwide that year.^[9] At the NCAA Outdoors she had her second win of the competition when she helped the Oregon women's team to the 4×400-meter relay title.^[4] That year she also led Oregon to a decathlon/heptathlon double at the Texas Relays, as she claimed the win alongside her schoolmate Ashton Eaton^[10] to whom she was engaged ( they married in July 2013 ) . ^{[11] [12]}

In 2011 she won at the NCAA Indoor Championships for a second time and broke Jacquelyn Johnson's collegiate record mark with a total of 4540 points from five events.^[13] She suffered an injury in the outdoor season that year and missed ten months as a result. She returned at the Texas A&M Challenge in January 2012 and recorded a score of 4555 points to win the meet. This was a new collegiate and Canadian national record for the event, beating Jill Ross-Giffen's previous score, and Theisen improved her personal bests in the shot put (12.87 m) and high jump (1.88 m) events.^[14] A third NCAA Indoor title came two months later with a winning score of 4536 points, which included a 60 m hurdles best of 8.25 seconds.^[15] She also repeated as the heptathlon champion and her personal best score of 6440 points included four new bests in individual events (hurdles, shot put, long jump and javelin).^[16]

Professional

Brianne Theisen Eaton (2nd from the right) competing at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London in the 800 m portion of the heptathlon.

Theisen placed second at the Canadian Track and Field Championships and went on to finish eleventh in the heptathlon at the 2012 London Olympics.^[17] A score of 6376 points at the 2013 Hypo Meeting was enough to win the high profile event ahead of Tatyana Chernova, and she formed a rare Canadian combined events double alongside the men's winner Damian Warner.^[18] The 2013 World Championships in Athletics was a wide open event in the heptathlon in that two of the world's best competitors in Chernova and Jessica Ennis-Hill both missed the competition as a result of injuries. Despite putting up a personal best 6,530 points, she had to settle for silver, just 56 points behind eventual World Champion Hanna Melnichenko.^[19] After Gotzis this was the second major competition in a row where the Canadian men and women multi-eventers had a double medal meeting after Warner won bronze at the world championships, however a double gold for the power couple of Eaton and Eaton-Theisen was narrowly missed.^[19] She commented on her achievement saying "I'm at peace getting silver knowing I gave it 110 per cent. Ashton and I talked about both being on the podium here. I watched Ashton the last couple of years winning his medals and could only imagine what that actually felt like."^[19] In her last outing that year she was third at the Decastar meet in France.^[20]

Competition record

College titles

• NCAA Indoor Championships: Pentathlon (2010, 2011 and 2012)
• NCAA Outdoor Championships: Heptathlon (2009, 2010 and 2012), 4×400 m relay (2010)

Personal

She married American decathlete and world record holder Ashton Eaton in July of 2013, the pair had originally met while competing together at the University of Oregon.^[21]

References

External links

• Athlete profile at Athletics Canada