Dan O'Brien

What gets me about Dan O'Brien is the comeback story behind the medals. He was the overwhelming favorite going into 1992, then famously no-heighted in the pole vault at the U.S. trials and didn't even make the team. A lot of athletes never recover from a public collapse like that. Instead he set the world record later that same year, kept winning world titles, and finally took Olympic gold in 1996. To me that's the more impressive line than the records themselves. The decathlon already demands you be good at everything, and he proved he could also absorb a brutal setback and come back sharper.

Daniel Dion O'Brien (born July 18, 1966) is an American former decathlete and Olympic gold medalist. He won the Olympic title in 1996, three consecutive world championships (1991, 1993, 1995), and set the world record in 1992.

Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Name (English)

Dan O'Brien

Name (Japanese)

ダン・オブライエン

Reading

だん・おぶらいえん

Born

July 18, 1966 (age 59)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Cancer / Horse

Origin

Portland, Oregon, United States

Blood type

Private

Height

188 cm

Agency

Private

Occupation

combined track and field event athlete / decathlete

Elementary school

Private

Junior high

Private

High school

Private

University

University of Idaho

Spouse

Private

Children

Private

Parents

Private

Siblings

Private

Motto

Private

• Official sitehttps://www.danobrien.com/
• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/danobrien96/
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%80%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%82%AA%E3%83%96%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A4%E3%82%A8%E3%83%B3

Tags

• Oregon
• combined track and field event athlete
• decathlete

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.