Coach O'Brien's Full Bio (pdf)
For the past six years, Dan O'Brien, a name synonymous with the decathlon across the world, has served as a volunteer coach on the Arizona State University track and field program, working with the multi-event athletes. Under his guidance, the athletes he has worked with have continued to show improvement both indoors and outdoors.
After working with the most successful multi-event standout in NCAA history in Jacquelyn Johnson, who won six national titles while working with O'Brien, the 1996 Olympic Champion will continue to turn his attention to furthering the development of a young crop of men's decathlon participants, which, in recent years, has paid off.
One of the men's multi-event athletes that has excelled under O'Brien is Jamie Sandys. A 2011 Capital One Academic All-American, Sandys has competed with O'Brien as his coach for three seasons and vastly improved each year. In the decathlon, Sandys scored 7,061 points at the Jim Click Multis in Tucson, which ranks him ninth all-time in ASU history. In fact, since 1989, only two men, both of whom were coached by O'Brien, have made ASU's Top 10 list.
Before his 704-point improvement in the decathlon from 2010 to 2011, Sandys also improved his indoor heptathlon score for the second year in a row, this time improving 100 points to 5,029 and becoming only the second ASU man to score over 5,000 points in the event. After scoring 3,874 points in the heptathlon in 2009, Sandys' score has climbed 1,155 points in his time under O'Brien.
Jeremy Marcinko (6,769 points) and Austin Prince (6,779 points) also have increased their decathlon scores, posting improvements of 618 and 470 points, respectively, from 2010 to 2011. All three men nearly scored at the Pac-10 meet with Prince taking eighth and Marcinko finishing ninth, one place out of the scoring.
On the women's side, O'Brien also lent his knowledge to three women at the Pac-10 Championships as Samantha Henderson won the heptathlon while Keia Pinnick was second and the Christabel Nettey, in her first-ever heptathlon, finished fifth, giving the women 26 points on the first weekend of the meet. Henderson went on to finish ninth at the NCAA Outdoor Championships to earn All-America honors.
During the 2010 season, Prince and Marcinko each competed in uniform for the first time as redshirt freshman and nearly scored at the Pac-10 meet, placing ninth and 10th, respectively. That same meet, Sandys' tallied 6,909 points to finish fifth at the conference meet and score four team points for the team. Indoors, Marcinko was the lone scorer, finishing eighth with 4,964 points while Sandys was just behind him in ninth at 4,929 points. In the same meet, Marcinko cleared 5.00m (16-04.75) to finish second in the pole vault and set the school record in the heptathlon pole vault.
In 2009, O'Brien worked with a handful of men in the indoor heptathlon and saw three of them post scores that rank them, at the time, in the Top 5 all-time in program history, including Duggan Grant (2nd - 4,688), Alexander Wentz (3rd - 4,417) and Prince (5th - 4,326) with Wentz setting the program record in a pair of events, including the pole vault (4.55m/14-11.00) and the 1,000m run (2:46.20), the final two events of the seven-event competition. Outdoors, his focus turned to working on the 10-event decathlon where Sandys (12th) and Grant (13th) both represented ASU in the Pac-10 Championships. Sandys scored 6,202 points in the conference event to improve by 169 points from earlier in the season while Grant scored 6,167 points in his first-ever decathlon.
During the 2008 season, O'Brien worked with Johnson as she won her third indoor pentathlon and fourth outdoor heptathlon crown. She set the indoor collegiate record in the pentathlon with a score of 4,496 points, which also stands as the third-best score in U.S. history. Her 6,347 points in the heptathlon is a Pac-10 record and helped her finish second at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials - Track & Field and earn a berth into the Beijing Olympics in the heptathlon.
Johnson won her second indoor pentathlon national title during the 2007 season before capturing her third outdoor heptathlon crown later in the year, helping ASU to a pair of national team championships, the first in the history of the program. O'Brien played a role in helping Johnson return to the track in 2006 following a year off to play basketball for the Sun Devils. In her first season back to competition, Johnson swept the multi-events, winning the national title at both the indoor and outdoor national meets while adding a Pac-10 title as well.
Joshua Kinnaman earned a trio of All-America honors during his time working with O'Brien, including an eighth-place showing at the 2007 NCAA Indoor Championships in the heptathlon. After sitting out most of the 2005 season because of injury, Kinnaman worked with O'Brien to make a strong comeback that saw him place eighth at the 2006 NCAA Indoor Championships in the heptathlon before placing sixth in the decathlon at the 2006 NCAA Outdoor Championships. All three performances earned Kinnaman All-America honors.
One of the top athletes in the history of the sport, O'Brien won the decathlon at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and earned the distinction of the "World's Greatest Athlete". Prior to his gold medal performance in the Summer Games, he won gold medals at the 1991, 1993 and 1995 World Championships while adding titles at the 1994 Goodwill Games in St. Petersburg, Russia. O'Brien later added a Goodwill Games title at the 1998 meet in New York.
After securing gold at the 1991 USA Track & Field Championships, O'Brien captured the same crown four years in a row (1993-1996) heading into the Atlanta Games. At the start of that run, he also stepped out of the decathlon to compete at the 1993 IAAF World Championships and won the heptathlon title with a world record point total. His success at the national level also earned him another distinction as his five championships tied him with Bill Toomey for the most ever in the history of the meet.
A native of Portland, Ore., O'Brien is no stranger to the Pac-10 Conference as he served as a volunteer assistant coach at conference rival Washington State from 1992-98. Then, in 1997, he moved to the Valley where he continued to train and compete.
Despite injuries preventing him from competing for the United States, O'Brien was a part of the last two Olympiads. Working with NBC, O'Brien provided analysis for the television network's coverage of track and field in both the 2000 Sydney Games and the 2004 Athens Games.
Prior to his success on the international stage, O'Brien competed at the University of Idaho. In his senior campaign, he earned All-America honors by placing seventh at the NCAA Indoor Championships in the 55m hurdles. The former Vandal now has his name adorned on the home venue of his Alma mater, the Dan O'Brien Track Complex.
O'Brien currently resides in Scottsdale with his wife, Leilani, and continues to speak and broadcast at events around the country. Most recently, he once again joined the CBS broadcast of the NCAA Outdoor Championships as a field reporter.