What are the goals of a decathlon?

Answer 1

The overall goal in a decathlon is to accumulate the highest score after competing in the 10 popular Track and Field events. The events were chosen to challenge a single athlete's fundmental abilities to sprint, throw, jump, and run long distances with an empthasis on the athlete's endurance to do so in competing through the events back-to-back over a two consecutive day competition; spliting the events to 5 events each day.

The decathlete, the athlete competing in the decathlon, does not necessarily have to win any of the 10 events in order to win the overall decathlon; just merely accumulate the highest total score at the end of the decathlon.

The scoring of each event is based off a standard decathlon scoring table which is based off the world record performance of each event when the scoring table was instituited.

You could also say that an athlete's individual goal would to be win every event; there by ensuring they would accumulate the highest total score in the end.