Twitter is dangerous. Occasionally I see a tweet which triggers my inner geek to create a random athletics-related list.

A few months back, fellow stats dude Hilary Evans tweeted about Russian heptathlete Tatyana Chernova’s recent wedding to decathlete Vitaliy Smirnov.

So of course, I had to create a list of the best husband-wife combined eventers in history. And here it is…

The table below ranks the couples in two ways – by the combined total of their PBs, and the combined total of the value of their bests according to the IAAF scoring tables. The table is sortable though, so you can click on the headings to filter them as you wish.

Note that some of these couples are no longer together. But I believe that they are all (or were at some point) married to one another, or at least considered each other as life partners.

This proved to be quite a tricky subject to research (but hey, what else am I going to do while stuffing my face with chocolate in the post-Christmas period), so if anyone has any additions or amendments to the list, please get in touch.

No one will be surprised to see the all-conquering Eatons at the top of the list. They are one of just three couples in history to be a part of the “15,000-point club” (yes, that’s a thing).

Bill Toomey and Mary Rand were one of the first top-level combined events couples, but Rand competed in the days of the pentathlon which would have put her at a disadvantage when it comes to a list like this, so I’ve not included them.

And no, I’m not planning on a follow-up post of “the best athletes produced by husband-and-wife combined eventers”. That’s too geeky, even for me.