Santa Rosa’s Jake Arnold placed 24th among 34 finishers at the IAAF World Track and Field Championships in Berlin on Thursday.
Arnold, 25, who was 13th at Worlds in 2007, finished with 7,837 points, the second-lowest score in his past nine decathlons and well off his personal-best of 8,215.
“I have always been lucky to have a bad event and recover on the next, but this time I had one of those meets and it never got better,” Arnold wrote in an e-mail. “I was still excited to be here watching great athletes like Usain Bolt, Trey Hardee and Bernard Lagat. Worlds is a great experience for me and I wish I didn’t do this at this meet.”
Hardee, a former NCAA champion at the University of Texas and a 2008 Olympian, won with a personal-best score of 8,790, the highest in the world this year. Hardee improved his top score by a stunning 256 points and now ranks third in American history behind Dan O’Brien and Bryan Clay, the gold medalist at the 2008 Olympics who didn’t compete at Worlds due to injury.
Arnold will next compete at DecaStar, a major international decathlon in Talence, France, from Sept. 19-20.