Damian Warner of Canada celebrates his gold medal in men’s decathlon at the Tokyo Olympics on Thursday. August 5, 2021. MELISSA TAIT/THE GLOBE AND MAIL

By the time Damian Warner lined up for the 1500m run on Thursday, his window of opportunity was locked in.

Short of falling over a gold medal was already guaranteed. Warner was racing for history.

With his finish of 4:31.08, he reached it.

Afterward, an exhausted Warner spent a few long moments with his hands-on his knees before letting out a primal scream.

Warner is not the just the first Canadian to win the Olympics’ most difficult event, the decathlon. He becomes only the fourth person in history to score 9,000 points – 9,018 – and the first to do it at an Olympic Games.

In decathlon terms, Warner just broke the four-minute mile.

There have been some remarkable highlights in the history of Canadian track and field. Hockey aside, it provides our deepest and richest collective sporting memories.

A few more of those have been provided in the last few days. But none of them match this. This is up there with Donovan Bailey’s world-record run in Atlanta and Ben Johnson’s (brief) time as king of track in Seoul.

Warner’s achievement is something we’ll be watching in the intros to Olympic broadcasts twenty years from now.

If Warner is the present, it should be noted that Canada’s future in the discipline was also being taken care of her in Tokyo. In his debut on this stage, 25-year-old Pierce LePage finished fifth. That’s where Warner found himself after his debut in London nine years ago.

The decathlon is not as sexy as a sprint. It will never be as primetime ready. But it is the most difficult discipline in track – probably in the Olympics – not because you must be good at everything, but because you can’t be bad at anything.

Warner becomes only the fourth man in this century to be crowned world’s greatest athlete. It’s an unbroken line that stretches back to Jim Thorpe and our purest ideas of athletics removed from commercial considerations.

Like every decathlete, Warner started out as something else. First, he was a basketball player. Then he was a long jumper. Then he was a decathlete. Then he was finishing 5th in an Olympics he’d been back-doored into on an “up and comer” concession.

He came through with a wave of track hopefuls in Rio who were close, and still got a cigar. As Canadians, we are incapable of simply enjoying things. We have to spin them out until Warner winning bronze in decathlon means Canada will soon be so dominant in the Summer Games that the U.S. will permanently run the flag at half mast.

A few of those bright young things burnt out. The brightest of them – high-jump gold medalist Derek Drouin – is out injured. So far in Tokyo, only de Grasse had vindicated his position as a track-and-field-based face of the Games.

Then Warner kicked off. No one on the Canadian Olympic team has more resolutely and inexorably hunted down his goal.

Warner’s origin story is a cliché – a listless kid, not particularly committed to anything, rescued by the discipline of elite sport.

Typically, top decathletes (is there any other sort?) are very good at a few things, then try to pad out their abilities at the others. Warner was pretty good, verging on very good, at everything. Like a lot of people who were once directionless, he found a regimented lifestyle suited him.

When the pandemic prevented the London, Ontario native for decamping to his winter training grounds south of Mason-Dixon, Warner stayed home and trained in an abandoned ice rink. Like Rocky.

There are 360 joints in the human body. While sprinting, throwing, jumping, vaulting and running, Warner has strained, pulled or snapped most of them. The enforced layoff during total shutdown allowed him to heal several pernicious injuries.

Before the Olympics, Warner travelled to a major warm-up competition in Austria. The trip was beset by logistical problems (a little foreshadowing). Warner won it with the fourth-highest score in decathlon history.

“I’ve never seen him so free and easy,” his coach, Gar Leyshon, told Canadian Press.

That just-cool-enough-for-school attitude persisted through the two days competition in Tokyo.

A lot of athletes come off the field bug-eyed, either because of adrenaline, excitement or disappointment. Warner drifts off like he’s been out there taking a nap. Shoes in hand, jaunty step, surprised, but happy, to see you.

When de Grasse won his gold in the 200 on Wednesday night, Warner stuck around to watch.

“Front row seats,” he said. “Best seats I ever had at the track.”

He was on his way to get in an ice bath, get stretched out, eat something and go back to the hotel. He figured he’d get five hours of sleep before his morning call.

“I know how to use some of those old dog tricks,” he called over his shoulder as he left. Warner is 31. Maybe someone should ask him to write a book called ‘Old Dog Tricks’, because they work.

His day began shortly after 9 a.m. The temperature was already in the low-30s. Warner set an Olympic decathlon record in the 110m hurdles.

Around 11, he came third in the discus throw.

Around 1, he put a personal best in the pole vault.

One assumes he then volunteered to drive the bus back to the Village for the afternoon break, finding a new, quicker route that Tokyo cab drivers will be copying for years to come.

When things spun back up at the track again for the evening session, Warner was a mortal lock for a gold medal.

But you know how mortal locks work. The Americans were a mortal lock to win the men’s 4×100 relay until they started juggling the baton during a handoff in Thursday’s semis like it was a sausage link. They finished sixth.

Mortal locks have a way of coming unlocked at the Olympics.

But Warner did not just hang on. He surged, putting up one of his best-ever throws in the javelin. In order to crack 9,000, he only needed to put in an average performance in the night’s capper, the 1500m. He was – as he has been these past two days – perfectly in control of his environment.

CATHAL KELLY
The Globe and Mail, August 5, 2021