Dean Macey (born 12 December 1977) is an English athlete from Canvey Island. He is best known for competing in the decathlon, which he did from 1995 to 2008, winning the Commonwealth Games decathlon, two World Championship medals, as well as twice finishing fourth in the Olympic Games. Retiring from decathlon due to injury, he competed in the bobsleigh between 2008 and 2010.
A popular media figure during and after his athletics career, he is a keen angler and has presented an angling television series "On Coarse" for the Discovery Channel,[3] and "Fishing Allstars" on ITV4. He has also set a record time (0:56) on the Total Wipeout Qualifier.
After his athletics and bobsleigh careers being a keen Angler he went on to make a series of fishing videos on YouTube and was sponsored by Guru.
The following year at the 2000 Summer Olympics, Sydney, Australia, after an injury ravaged year, Macey recorded another personal best score of 8567 points but could only finish fourth. The title was won by Estonian, Erki Nool but only after an appeal when earlier in the day the referee overruled his field judges and ruled out Erki's discus throw of 43.66 metres. The appeal was successful and the Estonian took gold ahead of the Czech, Roman Šebrle and AmericanChris Huffins.
Macey was back amongst the medals at the 2001 World Championships in the Commonwealth Stadium, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, improving on his personal best yet again, with 8603 points finishing with the bronze medal, once again behind Tomáš Dvořák (gold medal), and Erki Nool (silver medal).
At the 2006 Commonwealth Games, despite still nursing some injuries, Macey led after the first day with a personal best of 15.83 metres in the last round of the shot put. Over the course of the second day, that gap was reduced and overhauled by the Australian Jason Dudley because of injury-hampered performances in the 110 m hurdles and the javelin. Going into the final event, the 1500 metres, Macey needed to score 38 points more than Dudley to claim gold. He completed the event in 4:34.22, which gave him the gold medal by 69 points. Dean finished with a total of 8,143 points, ahead of the Jamaican Maurice Smith (silver) and Dudley (bronze).
In 2008 after a failure to reach the B Qualifying standard for the 2008 Olympic Games, at the Hexham International Combined Events Meeting, Macey admitted that he was considering his future. Young decathlete Daniel Awde was selected for the Olympics. On 15 July, he decided to retire from athletics.[4] Macey wrote a regular Olympic column in the Southend Echo newspaper entitled "Deano's Diary" in which he shared his views on the Beijing Games.[5]
In 2009, Dean Macey completed the Men's Health Survival of the Fittest 10km run in Edinburgh, Scotland, recording a time in excess of 1 hour 15 minutes.
After his retirement from athletics, Macey accepted a challenge to attempt to qualify for the 2010 Winter Olympics in the bobsleigh.[6] He trained with former sprinter Jason Gardener. The pair finished sixth in the two-man event at the 2008 British Bobsleigh Championships held in Cesana Pariol, Italy.[7] Subsequently, he worked for Eurosport as a regular part of the commentary team for the channel's bobsleigh coverage.[2]
