Defending Olympic champ Damian Warner crashes out of decathlon with frustrating fall

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Damian Warner will not return to Canada with another Olympic medal around his neck.

Competing in the decathlon at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the defending gold medalist saw his title defence come to a halt on the second day of the competition.

Competing in the pole vault portion of the event, Warner failed to clear the 4.60m target and scored no points. Given this result, Warner is now too far back to reach the podium in a sport where athletes add up their point totals from 10 track and field events.

The pole vault was the eighth of ten events, with Warner in second place after seven rounds.

Warner was one of three of 21 competitors to register no mark on the pole vault attempt.

Warner, 34, is competing in his fourth Olympics. He first represented Canada on the world’s biggest stage at London 2012. He finished fifth in that event before winning a bronze in Rio 2016 and claiming gold in Tokyo in the pandemic-delayed Games that took place in 2021.

But despite being older than most Olympians, Warner has spoken about how the diverse and unique nature of a decathlete’s skillset makes it a sport where competitors can continue later in their careers.

“When it is time for me to hang it up, they’ll see like there wasn’t always a linear path necessarily,” Warner said in an interview with Daily Hive in 2021. “But once he figured it out, we saw what he’s capable of.”

Fourteen years after winning silver at the Canadian championships at age 20, Warner seems still willing to put in the work as long as his body will allow.

“There’s always so many things [decathletes] can learn,” Warner added. “And I think that’s the reason why I think that decathletes, as long as they can stay healthy, can do this for a long, long time.”

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