Damian Warner will not be heading back 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 in the event. Given the 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.
Devastating miss for Damian Warner 😟
The Canadian has dropped out of medal contention in the decathlon after failing to score in pole vault
Details: https://t.co/hGlhs3ww0d pic.twitter.com/YythzfLgFE
— CBC Olympics (@CBCOlympics) August 3, 2024
The pole vault was the eighth out of ten events, with Warner in second place after seven rounds.
Warner was one of three out of 21 competitors to register no mark on the pole vault attempt.
Warner, age 34, is competing in his fourth Olympics, having 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 on the older side of 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 on later into their career.
“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 back in 2021. “But once he figured it out, we saw what he’s capable of.”
14 years on from winning silver at the Canadian championships at age 20, Warner seems like he’s 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.”