TORONTO — It wasn’t so much a victory lap as it was a conversation and a selfie with every single fan who witnessed history on Thursday night. There was a lot of hand kissing, too.
And heck, Damian Warner sure deserved to take his time with that celebration.
What a gutsy, gutsy finish to a 10-event, two-day track and field marathon. Warner didn’t even take off his own shoes when it was all over, he was that gassed.
He sat on a stool, grinning, as his white runners were removed from his feet. Then he got up and started the slowest and most conversation-filled victory lap of these Pan American Games.
Heading into the final event of the decathlon, the 25-year-old from London had this thing—this gruelling multi-discipline event that includes sprinting and launching things and jumping and distance running—in the bag.
He had the Pan American Games record pretty well in the bag, too. But Warner entered that final 1500M race chasing something no Canadian’s been able to catch for 19 years: Michael Smith’s decathlon record of 8626 points.
“I knew that I wanted the Canadian record so bad,” Warner said after, shoeless, smiling, a Canada flag draped around his neck. He’s 6-foot, 183-lb., and looks like he was cut from stone. “I didn’t think there was a better place to do it than at home.”
And that he did. Warner finished with a new Canadian record of 8659 points.
Everybody in the field knew he was close heading into that last event, that he needed to run a personal best to earn enough points. American Derek Masterson told Warner he could cut in front of him off the line. “We had the talk,” Masterson said after, still breathing heavy. Warner cut in front, took a lead after a lap and never looked back.
Warner crossed the finish line of that 10th event with his arms in the air in 4:24.73—nearly 10 seconds faster than the next-best runner. It was basically a one-man event. And that run was more than five seconds faster than his previous personal best. Still, he says he only knew with three metres to go that the record was his.
“I tried to look at the clock as much as possible and just feed off the crowd,” Warner said. “I wouldn’t have been able to run that time without them.”
Making this Canadian record broken on Canadian soil moment all-the-sweeter is the fact it was here, at York University, five years ago that Warner entered his first-ever decathlon. “I’ve kinda come full circle,” he said.
Warner took up the discipline that at the Olympics crowns World’s Best Athlete, at age 20 on the advice of his former high school basketball-turned-track coach, Gar Leyshon. It was a good idea. Warner’s 10th-ever decathlon competition came at the 2012 Olympics, and he placed fifth. A year later at the world championships, he won bronze.
He’s been vocal about his desire to take down Smith’s record, and to be the world’s best. He’s had the Canadian record in his sight since last year.
Decathlon is an event that’s tiring even to read or write and always runs in this order: 100-metre dash, long jump, shot put, high jump, 400-metre dash. Day 2 goes like this: 110-metre hurdles, discus, pole vault, javelin and finally, the kicker, the 1,500-metre run.
At the track facility where there’s always action going, most athletes are run-and-done, at least for the day. Warner and co. are almost always going, for two days straight.
Warner won the 100m, the long jump, the 400m, the 110m hurdles and the 1500M. “I keep improving,” he said, “and I’m gonna keep improving.”
His plan for the next couple days is to spend time with family, go to Dave and Buster’s “and play games,” and he’ll be taking in Kanye West at the closing ceremony. The focus then turns to world championships in Beijing in little over a month.
Warner, who smiles a lot, is soft-spoken, kind, and so thankful to the fans and his team. He would’ve talked for days, but a media attaché took him away.
While he was still doing that long victory lap, he was the talk of the interview area. Masterson was “still in a daze” from the 1500M, but the moment wasn’t lost on him. “You don’t get to watch an 8600 and a record like that go down very often,” he said. “It was awesome to be a part of.”
Masterson smiled when asked if anyone offered to pace Warner for that 1500 to help him break that Canadian record.
“The big man’s gotta do it himself, and he did,” the American said. “He’s a stud.”