Damian Warner of Canada in action at the men's decathlon high jump event on Aug. 2.Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters
Damian Warner will need to battle from behind to defend his Olympic decathlon title on Saturday.
The reigning gold medalist from London, Ont., is in fourth place after the first of two days in the decathlon at the Paris Olympics, but vows the event is far from over.
“It’s a lot easier to be the chaser than to be the person in the front, so I’m a chaser tomorrow,” Warner said. “I start off with my strongest event, the hurdles.”
Three years ago, at the Games in Tokyo, the Canadian led the competition from the first event to the last. He recorded the highest score in Olympic decathlon history, 9,018 points, providing one of the great performances in Canadian Olympic history. This time, after Day 1, he trails Leo Neugebauer of Germany, Ayden Owens-Delerme of Puerto Rico and Sander Skotheim of Norway.
Decathlon is a gruelling two-day event that features 10 disciplines, five spread throughout each day. It started at 10 a.m. Friday morning inside Stade de France, and the winner won’t be declared until late Saturday evening.
For a second successive Olympics, Warner, 34, is the oldest decathlete in the field.
Warner, appearing in his fourth Olympics, jumped out to a fast lead Friday in the first event by winning the 100 metres. His time of 10.25 seconds was shy of the Olympic record he holds from 2021 (10.12 seconds).
But Neugebauer surged into the lead with strong performances in the next two disciplines, long jump and shot put.
His 7.79 metres in the long jump was fourth in that discipline. In Tokyo, his long jump of 8.24 metres would been good enough for bronze in the men’s individual long jump event there.
Warner placed 13th in the shotput (14.45 metres). He was especially unhappy with that result.
“The shot put was not good, there’s no if, ands or buts about it,” Warner said. “It’s just kind of like ‘it sucked,’ now I’m just going to move on and don’t let that mess me up.”
There are 22 men in the competition. Canada was expected to have the top two decathletes in Paris, but reigning decathlon world champion Pierce LePage opted not to compete because of a back injury.
Warner sat in second place going into the mid-day break on Friday.
The decathletes returned in the early evening for two more events.
In the high jump, he was fifth best in the field at 2.02 metres, while the American winner of that event, Heath Baldwin, jumped 2.17 metres.
In the 400 metres, Warner finished sixth in 47.34 seconds. He fizzled out and grimaced over the final stretch of that race. He said he simply ran out of gas, but could laugh about it afterward when asked if there was an issue.
Damian Warner of Canada in action during heat 3 of the men's decathlon 400-metre race on Aug. 2.Alina Smutko/Reuters
“The issue is the race is 50 metres too long. If it was a 350-metre race, I think I would have did pretty well,” he joked with reporters. “There’s the Olympic rings at 350, and I wanted to try to get there as fast as I could. I did, but unfortunately there was 50 more metres that I had to run.”
The always-smiling Canadian even joked that the most fatiguing part of Day 1 was all the media stops he needed to make after the race.
On Saturday, the decathletes will compete in the 110-metre hurdles, discus, pole vault, javelin and 1,500 metres. While he acknowledged the second day is tougher to score points, he sees opportunity. Warner traditionally scores big in the hurdles. Day 2 also has lot of opportunities for contestants to mess up.
“The second day is a lot harder to score points. But that’s not only for myself, that’s for every decathlete,” he said. “The second day is very technical. But the cool thing for me is that my potential lies on the second day.”
He said it was hard to say what score it will take to get on the podium. He once believed at least 9,000 points would be needed to get a medal in Paris. Now he’s not so sure it will need to be that high.
“I wish I could have been a little bit better, but that’s the decathlon for you. There’s going to be some ups and downs and ebbs and flows,” Warner said. “But the cool thing about the decathlon, it’s not done in one day. It’s done in two.”