His last decathlon crossed back blocked a year ago in Tokyo, even rewarded with an Olympic silver medal, as in 2016 in Rio, remains "the worst of (his) life".
Before, at the 2019 Worlds in Doha when he was forced to retire, and after, from the winter season in May, it was his Achilles tendons suffering from chronic tendonitis - the right this time - that made suffer Mayer.
"The pain has never been so strong" as at the start of the year, told AFP the 30-year-old decathlete, forced to give up the Indoor Worlds in early March.
"I really struggled (...) It was really complicated to resume the race: I wanted to have no tendon pain and it lasted a long time", continues Mayer, who only got back into it around from mid-May.
- "Everything is fine" -
Things have improved a lot since then, to the point that the 2017 world champion said on Thursday that he had "no more pain in recent weeks".
His remedy for this “on fire” tendon? "Simply a strap" which he had the idea, he explains. "When I was young, I jumped high a lot and my heel shifted to the outside. The strap puts the heel back in line and the tendon is under much less pressure. It's really conclusive as a result."
Since his short appearance in length and weight at the Paris meeting in mid-June, in training Mayer has gone all out on the sprint, flat and over hurdles, to "be sure to have the sensations he had to, and it is."
"The rest, javelin, discus, weight, it came back in five seconds," he adds.
"Everything is fine, except for 1500m, two sessions (dedicated training), it's a bit tight. I don't have a lot of background. The rest, all the training I've done in each discipline shows that I am at my highest level, or even more", completes Mayer.
Enough to give rise to "a lot of expectations", which "creates a lot of stress", admits the double Olympic silver medalist.
- Weaned from competition -
"Given what I did at the Olympics last year with catastrophic performances apart from two events, if I don't medal here...", he breathes.
They are three, the Americans Garrett Scantling and Kyle Garland, as well as the Canadian Damian Warner, Olympic champion in title, to have exceeded 8,700 points this season. But the former, the world's top performer of the year, does not compete in Eugene due to a provisional suspension for breaches and tampering with his doping whereabouts obligations.
Mayer expects Warner "to be very strong." "If I have no physical problem, I expect to be at his level and to be able to pick him up," said the athlete, who sets the bar for a successful decathlon at 8,900 points.
Even weaned from competition? "I listen to myself a lot more, I force myself a lot less to do 36,000 competitions before the (big) championship. I don't feel the need to be in shape on D-Day," he says.
French athletics is counting on him: two days before the end of the Eugene Worlds, his counter remains stuck at zero medals. If the trend is confirmed, it would be a historic low point best known internationally since the 2000 Olympics and the 1993 Worlds.
