The last time most Canadians watched Damian Warner, it was the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, and he was making his case as the world’s best athlete.
The decathlete from London, Ont., led all competitors from start to finish with a record-breaking performance in the gruelling 10-event athletics competition. It was contested over two days in blistering August temperatures, in a stadium with no fans to applaud the accomplishments.
With an impressive score of 9,018 points, Canada's Damian Warner won gold for men's decathlon at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.The Canadian Press
Warner scored 9,018 points – eclipsing 9,000 is very rare in decathlon – and won gold in Tokyo, setting an Olympic record in one of the oldest events at the Games, and arguably its most difficult – competing at shot put, pole vault, high jump, javelin, discus, and long jump, plus four running races.
Recognizing his feat, Team Canada chose him as flag bearer. He led compatriots wearing masks and Canadian jean jackets in closing out an Olympics full of emotional performances and pandemic restrictions.
Now at 34, Warner is competing in his fourth Summer Games in Paris, starting Friday. He has improved with each Olympics – fifth at London 2012, bronze in Rio 2016, before gold in Tokyo. His performance in the long jump was so good it would have earned him bronze if he’d competed in that individual event. He’s in TV commercials, on grocery store billboards and on Cheerios boxes. So does he feel pressure to repeat as Olympic gold medalist?
“Only the pressure that I put on myself. It’s important to me and something that I believe that I can do,” he said. “But I’m not attuned to any outside pressure.”
Damian Warner competes in the decathlon long jump event at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.DYLAN MARTINEZ/Reuters
He is the favourite in Paris. Canada was supposed to have a formidable one-two punch in the decathlon, with Warner and Pierce LePage, countrymen and the world’s two best. Warner is Olympic champion, but LePage won the world championship last year in Budapest, Hungary, with 8,909 points, second highest in the history of the worlds, while Warner finished second. The two were expected to jockey for gold in Paris.
But LePage isn’t competing in Paris. The 28-year-old from Whitby, Ont., pulled out of with a back injury, announcing it on Instagram on July 17. LePage said he had suffered a herniated disc in April and needs surgery on his back.
LePage tried until the last minute, testing himself in events but found, “there was no power, nothing was really going on.” He said he made the tough decision to withdraw rather than risk further injury, to miss Paris and focus on getting healthy to defend his world title next year.
“The last couple of months have been pretty draining, to say the least,” LePage said in the Instagram video. “It’s really tough to see your dream kind of slip away.”
Canadian decathletes Damian Warner, left, and Pierce Lepage compete at the 2023 world championship in Budapest. Suffering from a recent back injury, LePage won’t compete alongside Warner at the Paris Olympics.FABRIZIO BENSCH/Reuters
LePage had finished fifth at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, then was runner-up at the 2022 worlds before winning in 2023. But LePage had not competed in a full decathlon since. He missed the Canadian Olympic trials in late June.
The decathlon competition got another jolt on Thursday when world record holder Kevin Mayer of France, 32, was ruled out of the event because of a thigh injury. The two-time Olympic silver medalist picked up the injury as he fell heavily during the 110-metre hurdles leg of a triathlon at the Paris Diamond League earlier this month.
While LePage is not in Paris, Warner said the rise of his fellow Canadian helped motivate him, too.
“His success has kind of made me be like ‘okay, let’s keep doing this,’” Warner said of LePage. “My drive to succeed in the sport is higher than it’s ever been, and I probably owe a lot of that to Pierce and his emergence in the sport.”
The two decathletes know each other well, but they don’t train together. LePage trains mostly at Toronto’s York University. Warner has always remained in London, Ont., training at Western University with Gar Leyshon and Dennis Nielsen, the same high-school teachers who noticed his athletic potential, supported the kid being raised by a single mother, and got him started in basketball, football and track and field.
That loyalty infused his training for Tokyo during the pandemic. With sports facilities closed, the same coaches and his community in London gave materials, equipment and muscle to help turn an aged hockey arena into a makeshift temporary training facility for Warner. They fashioned an ad hoc track and pits so he could practise his events, bringing in planks of wood, sand and gym mats. Many of the distances weren’t right inside that rink, so he’d sprint and finish into a crash mat. He trained in that improvisational way, while many of his competitors around the world prepared for the Olympics as usual, without COVID-19 restrictions.
“Our workload was way less than normal, and at the time, I was thinking ‘this is not going to be enough to achieve our dreams.’ But we went and scored higher than we’ve ever scored, and we won the gold medal,” Warner said. “So I had to look back and say maybe these ideas that I had in my head were wrong, all this training that I thought I needed to do.”
While his training for Paris has been more conventional, back at Western’s track, his 2021 experience changed how his team designs his workload.
“I’m 34 years old now, I’m the oldest athlete in the field, and I can’t do as much as someone that’s 19 or 20,” Warner said. “So what are the important things that I need to do so that I can stay healthy but also have enough fitness to perform well? We try to do as little as possible, and I think that we learned that in 2021.”
Warner and partner Jen Cotton have a three-year-old son, Theo, and await another baby due this fall. While Warner used to train six days a week for more than four hours at a time, now he trains five days a week, for two or three hours.
Warner doesn’t focus on hitting any particular score in Paris. He has a special calculator on his phone that computes decathlon points for each event, based on the time or distance achieved. He used to obsess over projecting how many total points he would need to win a competition, and then fixate on achieving that number as he progressed in the events.
But from experience, he’s learned that calculating a points total to chase is a faulty goal. Every decathlon has different weather and conditions, and you can’t control your competitors’ performances. One day it might take 8,800 points to win. On another, 8,700 might suffice. He now limits his use of the calculator.
“You’re trying to chase a ghost at that point,” Warner said. “You just need to go out there, take it all in, and compete against the competitors that are there on that day.”
Damian Warner competes in the men's decathlon javelin throw during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.BEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images
Getting all the equipment to the track and in place for each event is dizzying. On five of his past six trips to competitions, his bags have been lost, with all his equipment and the 10 different pairs of shoes he uses during events.
The sprint calls for light spikes, he said, while the shoes he wears for shot put have no spikes at all. For javelin, he needs a strong, bulky shoe. And don’t get him started on flying overseas with the pole-vault poles – an item many airlines quickly decline.
“It’s one of the more unglamorous parts about being a decathlete,” Warner said. “Lugging around all the equipment that you need.”
The Olympic decathlon begins at 10 a.m. on Aug. 2 with the 100-metre event, the first of five events that day, with five more on Day 2, concluding with the 1,500-metre race late on the night of Aug. 3. Warner has learned over years of meets that if he tries to remain mentally dialled into the competition for every hour of that two-day period, he will exhaust himself.
Damian Warner competes in the men's decathlon pole vault event on day thirteen of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.Cameron Spencer/Getty Images
While he used to be very serious throughout, now he’s more conversational with his competitors and coaches between events. After the first day of competition, he tries to eat as much food as he can handle, and then relaxes in his room, often tuning out over some episodes of The Office before sleeping in preparation to resume the decathlon the next morning.
Just as in Tokyo, heat is an issue in Paris. Warner seems unbothered by the idea of sprinting, throwing and jumping in sizzling temperatures. He turns it into a positive.
“I prefer when it’s really hot, because I feel like being an old man I don’t have to warm up as much,” Warner said with a laugh. “I’ve competed in really cold weather, really hot weather, rainy weather, so I’m prepared for anything.”
Because decathlons are so gruelling, just finishing is a source of pride, and the decathletes and coaches often share a lengthy time together at the end, hugging and congratulating each other.
“If somebody beats me, I’ll shake their hand,” Warner said. “And if not, then I’ll stand on top of the podium.”
He thinks it’s a shame that he accepts the medal on the podium by himself, that he’s alone for that belting-out-the-anthem moment, when he knows the contribution of his four coaches – Leyshon, Nielsen, Vickie Croley and Dave Collins – plus his sport psychologist, agent, training partners and his family.
“I don’t want to be the centre of attention. I don’t want to be the person that gets all the praise,” Warner said. “While I get the medal, I feel like that medal should be shared with a lot of different people, because they worked just as hard as I did.”
At 34, Damian Warner is competing in his fourth Summer Games in Paris.Cole Burston/The Globe and Mail