Couch: MSU's Heath Baldwin eyes title of 'world's greatest athlete' at Paris Olympics

EAST LANSING – Heath Baldwin will tell you that part of the draw of being a decathlete is the title at stake — as the world’s greatest athlete. No other event or sport gets to make such a claim. No other sport is a test of so many skills at once as the decathlon’s 10 events.

Baldwin, a Kalamazoo native and All-American at Michigan State, now gets his shot at that coveted crown — and an Olympic gold medal. Baldwin, who won the decathlon at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials last month in Eugene, Oregon, is set to compete Aug. 1-2 in Paris. He was scheduled to arrive in time for Friday’s opening ceremony.

“I think it's kind of sunk in now,” Baldwin, 23, said last week, ahead of his last workout at MSU’s Ralph Young Field, before flying to Germany for final preparations for the Olympics. “When I got back to Lansing, I was just like sitting in my room (realizing), ‘Oh, yeah, I'm actually going to the Olympics. That's pretty wild.’ ”

He’s not headed to Paris to wave at the crowd, soak it all in and be able to say he was an Olympian — though that’s pretty cool. He’s the No. 6-ranked decathlete in the world, the best in the U.S. at the trials, capable of a score, he believes, that’s good enough to medal.

“I think that'd be a good accomplishment in my first Olympics,” Baldwin said. “I’m pretty young. And if I can get a medal and gain some experience, too, I think that'll be a win. But I've gone into every meet this year hoping to win. So I mean, obviously, the main goal is to take my best shot at winning.”

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Baldwin isn’t some underdog story. He was a dominant small-school track star at Kalamazoo Hackett Catholic High School. Then he began his career at the University of Michigan, earning second-team All-American honors in his first full season in 2021, before his coach there left and he decided to change majors and transfer to MSU.

In East Lansing, Baldwin’s been a force, especially in 2023, when he was named MSU Athletics Male Athlete of the Year, breaking school records in the heptathlon and decathlon and earning first-team All-American honors in both the indoor and outdoor seasons. He won the Big Ten indoor heptathlon that year and took fifth in the decathlon at the NCAA outdoor track and field championships.

The Olympics, though, began to seem attainable after he finished second in the heptathlon in the NCAA indoor championships this past winter.

“I was like, ‘OK, all the tools are in place there for what we need,’ ” MSU’s and Baldwin’s jumps coach, Richard Fisher, said. “It’s just whether he can put it together on that stage in front of major competition. And he did that well at indoor nationals. That showed me ‘OK, we have a real shot.’ ”

Baldwin then also finished second in the decathlon at the famed Mt. SAC Relays and was the only college athlete in the top four there. He skipped the NCAA outdoor championships in June because they were too close to the Olympic trials.

“I think if I tried to do (the NCAA championships), I wouldn't have been as fresh as I was going into the trials,” Baldwin said. “And I probably wouldn't have scored as well.”

At the U.S. trials, Baldwin shook off early jitters with a personal best in the shot put and got rolling, finishing with 8,625 points, ahead of second-place Zach Ziemek (8,516) and third-place Harrison Williams (8,384), who also both qualified for the U.S. team. Baldwin won four of the 10 decathlon events — the shot put, javelin, high jump and 110-meter hurdles. His MSU teammate, Ryan Talbot, who finished eighth overall, won the 100-meter dash and discus. It wasn't enough to qualify for the Olympic team, but Talbot plans to be in Paris to cheer on Baldwin.

In the final decathlon event at the trials — the 1,500-meter run — when Baldwin’s overall lead meant that all he needed to do was finish the race to qualify for the Olympic team, Talbot ran alongside his MSU teammate down the stretch, writing for the MSU Today newsletter that he “was thrilled to be at the finish line with him to celebrate.”

For Baldwin, the frenzied days that followed were about taking advantage of a moment when his star was as bright as it’s ever been, locking up sponsorships, including, most importantly, with Nike. He’s not expecting an ad blitz similar to Reebok’s famed and ill-fated “Dan and Dave” campaign in 1992, but he's got a chance to build his standing in Paris and perhaps become a household name.

“Coming off the the win at trials, obviously I have a lot going for me right now,” Baldwin said. “So trying to like market that as as well as I can and make sure we're getting a good deal.”

After the Olympics, he’ll take a couple-month break for what will be his offseason. Then he'll continue his professional career, which will be largely sponsor-driven, while competing in about four decathlons a year.

First, Paris. Baldwin has already gone up against many of the top decathletes he’ll face in the Olympics, including world No. 1 Leo Neugebauer of Germany, who competed for the University of Texas and narrowly beat Baldwin in the heptathlon at the most recent NCAA indoor championships.

“I think probably (a score of) around an 8,700 will medal,” said Baldwin, who scored 75 points shy of that at the U.S. trials. “I think I'm definitely capable of doing that. I’ve just got to put together some good events on the day. … I don't think I need to do anything dramatically better. I just need to make some small improvements in a couple of different events. Just clean up my long jump a little bit. I definitely know I can run faster in the 100, 400 and 1,500. And I think there's a lot more there in the discus. So I think all that will add up. And hopefully that'd be more than 100 points.”

The decathlon is a grueling couple days of competition at the Olympics, beginning at 10 a.m. the first day until about 11 p.m., then back at the track about 6 a.m. the next morning.

“It beats you down,” Baldwin said.

It’s his ability to maintain his energy, relax when possible and keep his head in the right space that’s made him elite in one of the more demanding events in sports. That, coupled with talent and timing.

“Sometimes you can have it on the wrong year and all. That's where the timing aspect comes into it,” Fisher, his coach, said. “But the higher level you get, the more the mental side is more important than the physical side. And for him, it's the urge to compete and want to get better.

“He likes being around people who are better than him so he can rise to that occasion. That's what separates him from the rest.”

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Couch: MSU's Heath Baldwin eyes title of 'world's greatest athlete' at Paris Olympics