TOKYO :If halfway leader Kyle Garland goes on to win the decathlon world championships gold on Sunday he will look back on his brave long jump as the moment he truly arrived at the top of the table.

The 25-year-old Garland opened proceedings on Saturday with a sharp 10.51 seconds 100 metres but was facing oblivion when he fouled his first two attempts at the long jump.

Instead of making sure of hitting the board with a safe third effort, however, he went all or nothing and, to his huge joy, it turned out to be all as he sailed to 7.92 metres, his longest jump for two years.

Riding the buzz of that he then cleared 17 metres in the shot put for the first time to surge into the early lead and maintained the momentum in the high jump with 2.11m, the second-best of the night.

He then hauled his tired, muscular frame around the 400m in a season's best 48.73 seconds as he seeks to become the first American champion since Ashton Eaton in 2015, the last of four in a row for the U.S.

Sander Skotheim won a fair play award last year when, having failed to register a height in the pole vault at the Paris Olympics, he opted to remain in the competition to pace fellow Norwegian Markus Rooth through the final 1,500m en route to his gold.

With Rooth absent through injury, Skotheim took on the mantle well on Saturday, highlighted by a 2.14 high jump, to stay on Garland's tail.

At the halfway point, Garland has 4,707 points, Skotheim, who always has a strong second day, is on 4,543. Puerto Rico's Ayden Owens-Delerme is third on 4,487 and Germany's 2024 Olympic silver medallist Leo Neugebauer is fourth on 4,455.

Canada's Pierce LePage had a torrid start to the defence of the title he won in Budapest. A sluggish 10.84 seconds 100m - over half a second off his best - set the tone for the day and after four events he was 15th and dropped out before the 400m

The competition started with an empty lane in the 100m heats where Canada's former Olympic Damian Warner, one of only four men to surpass the 9,000 points mark, was supposed to be.

However, he failed to recover from an Achilles injury and pulled out.

American Garland leads decathlon after gutsy long jump