Washington – USA Track and Field have labelled reigning Olympic decathlon champion Ashton Eaton "the world's greatest athlete" following his retirement from the sport on Wednesday.
Eaton, 28, announced his retirement via his website, in which he also detail how he was inspired to start competing in athletics in the first place.
"It has been 10 years since then (secretly I find that fitting) and it’s my time to depart from athletics; to do something new. Frankly there isn’t much more I want to do in sport," Eaton said in the post on Weareeaton.com.
"I gave the most physically robust years of my life to the discovery and pursuit of my limits in this domain. Did I reach them? Truthfully I'm not sure anyone really does. It seems like we tend to run out of time or will before we run out of potential. That makes humanity limitless then, as far as I'm concerned. And I think that's inspiring."
Eaton won gold at the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games, the 2013 and 2015 World Championships and the 2012, 2014 and 2016 World Indoor Championships. He also set the decathlon world record at the 2015 World Championships.
In a post on the USA Track and Field website, the one which referred to Eaton as "the world's greatest athlete", the organisation's CEO Max Siegel praised the world record holder.
“Ashton is an incomparable athlete and ambassador for our sport,” Siegel said. “His dedication and sportsmanship both on and off the field of play elevated the decathlon and the sport of track and field as a whole. He is retiring with the same grace and class that he embodied while competing.”
Brianne Theisen-Eaton, Eaton's wife, also announced her retirement on the website at the same time. The Canadian athlete, who won heptathlon bronze at last year's Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, met Eaton while they were teammates at the University of Oregon. The were married in 2013.