As of: November 13, 2025 12:12 p.m
Decathlon world champion Leo Neugebauer ascended the athletics throne in Tokyo this summer and was crowned king of athletes. Born and raised in Germany, influenced by his Cameroonian roots and formed in the USA, the 25-year-old’s potential seems limitless.
If you want to understand Leo Neugebauer’s path to becoming a world-class athlete, you have to travel to Central Africa. “I’m German and raised German, but my dad comes from Cameroon and you can’t ignore that. The Cameroonian roots are there, they’re in my genes,” says Neugebauer as he sits among spinach, white pepper and cassava on his uncle’s farm just outside Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé.
The family as the foundation
The world champion, who has long been a citizen of the world, is very consciously following in the footsteps of his origins. It is Neugebauer’s fourth visit to his father’s homeland. Here, too, far away from Stuttgart, where he grew up, it becomes clear: the family is the foundation on which the world’s best decathlete built his sporting and human maturation process.
“The World Cup title changed a lot. Not only in my life, but also for the people around me.”
Leo Neugebauer
Papa Neugebauer the “biggest fan”
Terence Neugebauer is his son’s “biggest fan”. Led by Papa Neugebauer, the family takes part in every major competition with specially made Leo T-shirts. “I want to be everywhere he is,” says Terence Neugebauer, whose life has also changed with his son’s success.
Terence Neugebauer at the World Cup in Tokyo 2025.
“I don’t know what they used to think about me in Cameroon. Maybe that I wouldn’t be able to achieve anything,” the father remembers of the time when he went to Germany as a young man to become a professional soccer player, but was slowed down by injuries. “Today the whole family is proud of me. We have a world champion who comes from me.”
“This boy will achieve something in the world”
It becomes apparent early on that little Leo has what it takes to become something great. Like so many children in Germany, he initially tried out football, but at the age of six he also took up athletics. At some point, his coach approached dad Terence: “Please give him to me alone and don’t send him to football anymore. I see something in this boy. He will achieve something in this world,” Terence Neugebauer remembers the coach’s words.
He doesn’t have to pressure his son, Leo decides for the all-around competition himself and takes the decisive step in 2019. He is attending the University of Texas at Austin to study business and work on his athletics career.
“That’s where I started to take it really seriously. I was still in college, but I trained like a professional,” says Neugebauer, who is now a full-time professional after graduating in 2024. “Leo alone managed that. There was no pressure from us, he worked his way up,” says the father.
“Thank God I had strict parents”
Maybe not pressure, but discipline. “I had strict parents. As a child I often felt that was unfair, but in retrospect I wouldn’t want to change anything and say: Thank God,” remembers “Leo, the German,” how they baptized the model athlete in his adopted home of Austin, Texas. His belief: “Those who had cool parents and were allowed to do everything are less likely to become anything.”
German record holder (8961 points), Olympic runner-up in Paris 2024 and world champion in Tokyo 2025: Leo, a family man, has become the exceptional athlete Neugebauer, whose current success has a lot to do with his CV.
German thoroughness paired with American lifestyle
“On the one hand, there is the German thoroughness paired with the American lifestyle: everything is easy, everything is good, we see the positive and have confidence in ourselves,” explains ex-decathlete and ARD athletics expert Frank Busemann. “That’s very important. He has the confidence to do something, doesn’t hide and knows what he can do.”
“He uses the mistakes he makes to his advantage”
And then, above all, there is Neugebauer’s ability to recapitulate mistakes and fix them. “He is with himself, has not become a different person and takes external influences with him as a learning process. He uses the mistakes he makes to his advantage,” says Busemann. “But he can only do that because he is as good as he is.”
“He’s an all-rounder who still has potential everywhere. And that should scare the others.”
ARD athletics expert Frank Busemann
Budapest 2023 as a learning process
Neugebauer is already showing what is possible for him in his World Cup debut in 2023. In Budapest he is leading after the first day. “Suddenly all eyes are on you, that’s something completely different,” the 25-year-old remembers the tension and the pressure. The night when the head comes into play doesn’t make it any better. Decathletes like to call it the “eleventh discipline” for good reason. The hurdles and discus throw failed on the second day. Neugebauer ended up fifth and took home the feeling that there was more to it.
At the Olympic Games in Paris a year later he was on course for gold again and did better. Neugebauer withstood the pressure to win a medal, took silver, but remained below his potential in the French capital on the second day.
The Hammer of Tokyo in the shape of a spear
The key to gold is the javelin throw, as Neugebauer and his coach Jim Garnham quickly realize when analyzing their mistakes. “With 56 meters you lose points, with 60 to 63 you swim along. With anything beyond that you can win points,” explains Busemann, who also won Olympic silver in Atlanta in 1996.
Video:
The Golden Decathlon by Leo Neugebauer (17 min)
With a personal best of 58.99 meters, Neugebauer will compete in the javelin throw in Tokyo on September 21st, but he will have disciplined work on his mistakes and his American lifestyle minimum in his luggage. “There’s a cool crowd here, my family is here: Let’s have a little fun,” says the German and catapults his javelin to an outstanding 64.34 meters.
“The sky is the limit”
With this spear-shaped hammer, he takes the lead and then brings gold to the finish line in a furious 1,500-meter race. He lies on the track for minutes, completely exhausted. “There are lucky punches in athletics, but this definitely wasn’t one,” says Neugebauer, whom his coach sees as far from being at the end of his development. “I probably shouldn’t say it, but ‘the sky is the limit’. He can do something that no one else has ever done before,” Garnham said.
Will the king climb Mount Olympus in LA?
Will the coronation in Tokyo be followed by promotion to the Olympus in 2028 at the Games in Los Angeles? Neugebauer will then be in his prime decathlon age. The world record is also shaky. He is 165 points short of the record set by Frenchman Kevin Mayer (9126). “He is an all-rounder who still has potential everywhere. And that should scare the others,” says expert Busemann.
