Ashton and Brianne Re-Engaged With The Sport And Preparing For Baby

By Nate Mann, Special To DyeStat

DOHA, Qatar – When Ashton Eaton and Brianne Theisen-Eaton retired in 2017, Ashton had just won his second Olympic gold medal in the decathlon and Brianne had just won bronze in the heptathlon. They were still in top form, but after the 2016 Rio Olympics, the usual exhaustion of a long season felt amplified.

They moved to San Francisco, Calif., for the next phase of their life together, which was Ashton’s first time living outside the state of Oregon, and they removed themselves from the track and field world.

“As soon as we retired, we just felt very burnt out,” Brianne said. “You can’t just hang on to athletics, especially since we knew we didn’t want to coach or anything like that. So, we really wanted to take a couple of years to just figure out who we were away from the track as normal people and not athletes.”

The hiatus didn’t last long as the Eatons, who were teammates at the University of Oregon, are once again involved in the sport. They recently joined a list of historic athletes as ambassadors for the IAAF, a position they’re excited to hold, and are hoping to contribute to the 2021 world championship efforts in Eugene, as well.

Their return, Ashton said, was triggered by watching the 2018 World Cup. Both missed the social aspect of the sport as well as its plentiful travel; since retiring, they’ve visited Peru and Iceland but went more than one year without making any big trips.

“There’s nothing like sport, there’s nothing like bringing people together,” Ashton said. “The internet, the postal system and sport, are the only three things that I can think of that bring the entire world together.”

Their time in California has provided new experiences.

Living in an apartment in the city, Brianne began working for a health and science startup. She and seven coworkers bring elite science testing generally reserved for Olympic athletes to average people trying to improve their health. If a business executive wants to hike Mount Everest, Brianne and the startup will craft a plan to help them achieve that goal.

Ashton, who has shown interest in technology and science throughout his career, joined a software company.

“He’s more of the tech-y geek,” Brianne said.

The experience made Ashton want to go back to school. He graduated from the University of Oregon in 2010 with a psychology degree and is now taking pre-requisites such as physics, chemistry and math at a San Francisco school to prepare to return to school and study engineering. 

The two have enjoyed their time away from Oregon. They appreciate the accessibility of San Francisco; their apartment is near the Oracle Park and the Chase Center, plus all the other events held at those venues, like concerts.

Their time in California will be short-lived, though. Ashton and Brianne plan to return to Oregon, the Portland area, in the near future.

“I felt like we have lived it up,” Brianne said. “I’m starting to feel old and like, ‘I’m ready to settle down in the suburbs, you know like have a garden,’ and that kind of thing.”

For Ashton, the return to his home state might not include a return to his alma mater, the University of Oregon.

“There’s only one school in Oregon that has engineering,” he said without initially naming Oregon State University. “In my heart, I’m always obviously gonna be a Duck, but if I have to go to OSU to do my engineering, so be it. I’ll always support the Ducks.”

And if the Eatons are back in Oregon, that means they’re back in the world of track and field. An email from the IAAF asking the couple to be ambassadors for the sport reeled them back in.

“When you’re an athlete, you see all these great athletes like Carl Lewis and Stefan Holm and all these people, and they’re the IAAF ambassadors,” Brianne said. “They’ve retired from the sport and they’re promoting it. To be like, ‘I’m now one of them,’ it’s first of all shocking, but then it’s a pretty big honor.”

Simultaneous with the move and reintroduction to track and field, the Eatons are expecting a baby in roughly 20 weeks. They are waiting until birth to know the gender of the baby, something Ashton didn’t initially agree with but quickly became convinced of thanks to advice from several different friends.

Those same friends have told the couple to catch up on sleep now.

Ashton and Brianne have also decided to be low key, at best, about their athletic success in front of their children.

“We’ve talked about this a lot and both of us agree that want to keep what Ashton and I have done from our kids for as long as possible, just let them be normal kids growing up and not tell them what we did … and let them find their own path,” Brianne said.

While their kids might not be involved with sports, the Eatons will continue to be. They hope to join the Oregon21 efforts ahead of the next world championships at their former stomping grounds: Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon.

“Having been an athlete who has competed at multiple Olympics and world championships, I have a sense of what an athlete would expect and what they would want to see out of a world championships,” Brianne said. “Competing at the U of O and loving the community of Eugene, I really want to see that succeed.”