With one glaring 8-pound, 1-ounce exception, little is new for decathlete Bryan Clay, who won Hawai'i's first individual Olympic medal since 1988 last year in Athens.

The exception is Jacob Ezra Clay, who checked into Bryan and Sarah Clay's silver-tinted world July 1. Fittingly, Jacob was half as heavy as a shot put and twice as big as a discus at 20 1/2 inches.

"It was everything I thought it would be," Clay says of Jacob's birth. "You never really understand how much you can love somebody until you have a kid.

"The first thing I thought when the baby came and we were going through the birthing process was: How can anybody deny there's a God out there? It was absolutely amazing. Not the prettiest thing I've ever seen, but definitely the most amazing thing I've seen in my entire life. It was just awesome."

It has served to put Clay's recent feats, including last year's silver Olympic medal, into perspective.

The Castle High graduate won the decathlon at the U.S. Outdoor Track and Field Championships last month, setting a decathlon discus world record in the process (183 feet, 3 inches). Next month he heads to Helsinki for the World Championships.

Apparently, the only person who could have prevented it was Jacob. Clay won nationals June 24, with a cracked rib suffered three weeks earlier and one eye on Sarah, trying to sit calmly in the stands.

If she had gone into labor, he had already decided to leave the competition. Their hospital was 40 minutes from the championships in Carson, Calif.

"It was not that big a decision," Clay says.

The Clays claim Jacob is their only compelling change since Athens, other than lack of sleep. We still "work as hard as we ever have and go to church every Sunday," Bryan says.

He spends his days training at Azusa Pacific, where he graduated with a degree in social work in 2003. She finished the semester teaching her kindergarten class and now plans to take at least the next year off to be with Jacob.

That makes Bryan the breadwinner in the family for the first time, a change the Clays had planned all along but couldn't confirm until he struck silver.

Not that the medal has caused a flood of endorsements to float their way, from the U.S. or Japan (Clay is the first Olympic decathlon medalist of Japanese descent). There are a few more speaking engagements and appearances, but Nike and Oakley remain his primary sponsors.

"We hope to find somebody who has a love for the decathlon," Bryan says, "and wants their company image to be represented by people who work hard and never give up and have the qualities all decathletes have."

He will return to Hawai'i in the next few months to make appearances for the Straub Bone and Joint Center and promote his newly formed Bryan Clay Foundation, designed to help kids follow in his fleet footsteps.

Then it's back to work, raising a family and training for the Beijing Games in 2008.

But first, he hopes to stay healthy in Helsinki. Clay was hurt at the past two World Championships, in Edmonton and Paris.

"This will be the one to let everyone know I can do what I'm supposed to do," Clay says.

Chances are, everyone learned that a year ago, when the only decathlete Clay couldn't chase down was world-record holder Roman Sebrle.

Clay says those two days in Athens helped his confidence immensely, and convinced him to follow the same training plan, only enjoy it more. There will be no drastic changes. What he hopes for now is improved consistency.

According to Sarah, the only change in her husband since has been subtle, and for the better.

"He's got one medal under his belt so he is not so worried about making his mark on the world," she says. "He is more relaxed."

According to mother Michele Vandenberg, Bryan is even calm with her "perfect" hapa-haole grandson. "He and Sarah seem like an old married couple and they've only been married 1 1/2 years," Vandenberg says. "They seem so natural, like they have been doing it for so long. It's great from grandma's standpoint."