Decathlete Ashton Eaton spoke ahead of his title defence at the Athletics World Championships in Beijing, China.

Script:

SOUNDBITE (English): Ashton Eaton, USA, Decathlon:
"Physically, I feel awesome. And it's just ... mentally I feel good too, like I know what I have to do. But can I say "yeah, I am going to break the world record?" Physically I would say I am very capable right now. It's just an interesting experience, to do something you have never done before, like I didn't expect to break the world record then. And now I am thinking "well do you have to expect it or can you just say yes, today is the day, I am doing it today." And I just think I have to go out there to compete like I normally do. And so yeah, obviously if it comes down to the 15 or anything like that, I am going for it. Like it's just no question. But it's all an accumulation."

SOUNDBITE (English): Ashton Eaton, USA, Decathlon:
"To me, those kind of things (storm of doping allegations) are "low hanging fruit" for journalists really to talk about that so much. Because every single athlete that is here, has a reason, probably a ton of reasons, why they shouldn't be ... something in their life they have had to go through, in order to get here. For example, I knew an athlete, here mum and her slept in a car. I think she was an Olympian in 2012. And that is just one of so many I have heard at a dining hall table from athletes. And I think that it is just a super injustice to be, to have so much on that when there are so much inspiring stories like that for athletes."