Damian Warner is out of medal contention in the Olympic decathlon after failing to clear the opening height of 4.60 metres in the pole vault.
The London, Ont. native was ready to defend his gold-medal title from Tokyo, where he set an Olympic record of 9,018 points, but struggled mightily in the event.
It was also a bad day for Norwegian competitor Skotheim Sander, who was in third place entering Day Two. He also did not record a height for the pole vault. Warner and Sander, both looking to be front-runners in early action on Day One, now sit in 18th and 19th place, respectively.
“There’s a lot of ups and downs,” Warner said to reporters about his performance on Friday. “A lot of things that I can pick and wish I could have been a little bit better, but that’s a decathlon for you. It’s going to be some ups and downs, some ebbs and some flows.”
Two weeks ago, he envisioned needing 9,000 points just to stake out a place on the podium. That was before Canadian teammate and reigning world champ Pierce LePage pulled out with a back injury that needs surgery, before world record holder Kevin Mayer of France pulled out with a thigh injury, and before Australian Ashley Moloney, the bronze medalist from the Tokyo Olympics, pulled the plug after a dismal three events on Friday.
Now on top of this, with Warner’s dismal performance on Saturday, the medal race on Day Two looks to be a little different than what was initially expected in early Olympic predictions. Warner hinted at the uncertainty of the decathlon in his remarks to reporters on Friday.
“Other people can mess up on day two,” he said. “Other people can stumble and drop out and do all these kind of things, so the decathlon’s just a whole minefield of traps and stuff that you just have to avoid, and it’s going to be who avoids the most tomorrow.
“You either have a feeling of catching up or a feeling of fending off all the other competitors. Both positions have pressure, but it’s a lot easier to be the chaser than it is to be the person in the front. I’m a chaser tomorrow, and I start off with my strongest event, the hurdles.”
With files from Dan Barnes