The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

COACH Petros Kyprianou feels national record holder Ken Mullings has all the makings of being a top-notch decathlete.

Kyprianou, who hails from Greece, has been working with Mullings since he made the transition to their training camp in Urbana, Illinois.

In his first appearance this year in the multiple event competition over the weekend in Illinois, Mullings surpassed the 6,000-point mark as he accumulated a total of 6,340 points to improve on his previous national record for the indoor heptathlon - a seven-event competition.

“Last year when he came over, we didn’t get a chance to work with him as much as we did this year during the offseason,” Kyprianou said.

“He almost touched 6,000 points last year. But this year, he got the opportunity to work with us at the University of Illinois in November, so he really got to change a lot of his weaknesses. He’s become more efficient with his techniques and his speed and he’s gotten a lot stronger.“

Despite his increase in numbers, Kyprianou admitted that Mullings has to improve on his time in the 1,000 metres and the 1,500m outdoors, with the five-metre pole in the pole vault, his long jump and being consistent in the high jump.

“All around, I feel very good. Hopefully he can get to go to the World Indoor Championships and com- pete for a medal,” he said.

“He can jump further in the long jump, his shot put needs to be more than 16m, he improved a lot in the hurdles, but he can do it again, but where he can get a lot of points is the high jump and the 1,000.

“In the 1,000m, it’s about 10 or 11 points per second, so when you are running 2:52 rather than 2:40 minutes, that’s another 100 points.

“I told him he needed to run 2:45 to score over 6,400 points. He just needs more experience in that event, rather than going out there and jogging it. If he can run it a lot faster, he could be in contention for a medal.”

And based on his training environment, Kyprianou said it shows that Miullings is not just healthy, but he’s happy, so if they can keep him in that frame of mind, he will be a contender.

“He’s not on the NCAA team, but he’s training with the group here and helping out,” Kypianou said. “He has a good training partner and next year, we will have another competitor who I trained in Greece, so he will have plenty of help to get him to the next level.”

As the world’s leader so far this year in the pentathlon, Kyprianou said Mullings should have no problem qualifying for the Worlds set for Glasgow, Scotland, March 1-3.

“I feel vey great. I’m happy with my decision to the come here. This is a game changer,” said Mullings, aged 26, who also said his performance has really indicated how well he’s progressing.

“There were some personal bests that I had for too long and I needed to improve on and I basically destroyed most of them, so I couldn’t ask for more,” Mullings said. “The competition was perfect for January, especially for a home meet.

“My teammate scored a personal best of 930 points and everybody had solid individual marks to keep the competition solid enough for me to perform as best as I did.”

With some time off to recuperate, Mullings is returning home this week to spend some time with his wife Abigail Adderley, and his son, Myles, who is celebrating his birthday on February 3.