The decathlon was a men's event and part of the Athletics at the 1964 Summer Olympics program in Tokyo.

[1] Storozhenko moved from fourth place to first with his performance in the shot put, as Thomas dropped from the lead to eighth.

Yang continued to advance, and Herman and Kuznetsov also moved into position to challenge for medals, while Beyer dropped out of contention into 8th place.

In contrast, Yang was only 23 points behind Aun in an effort to knock the Soviet off the medal platform.

Aun, with a 67-point deficit to catch Walde for the silver medal, needed to run approximately 10 seconds faster than the German.