RIO DE JANEIRO – Canada’s Damian Warner captured bronze in the decathlon on Thursday at the Rio Olympics.
The London, Ont., native finished the 10-discipline competition with 8,666 points. He matches Dave Steen from the 1988 Seoul Games for the best-ever Canadian finish in decathlon.
Defending champion Ashton Eaton of the U.S. won gold with 8,893 points while France’s Kevin Mayer took silver with 8,834 points.
Warner finished the final event – the 1,500 metres – in fourth place in a time of four minutes 24.90 seconds.
Warner arrived at the London Olympics four years ago with a double-digit world ranking, but wound up finishing a surprise fifth.
Since then the field has gotten much tougher, but he won bronze at the 2013 world championships and then silver at last summer’s world championships in Beijing as part of Canada’s historic eight-medal performance.
The decathlon is known as the ultimate all-around test, 10 events spanning the range of track and field disciplines spanning two long days. The winners is touted as “the world’s greatest athlete.”
Warner sat in third place after a rocky Day 1 that included a solid 100 metres and high jump. But he struggled in the shot put and 400 metres.
The 26-year-old picked up a score of 63.19 metres in the javelin throw on Day 2 – the fifth best in his group – for 786 points.
Warner had the best time in the 110-metre hurdles, finishing in 13.58 seconds. In the discus, he had a throw of 44.93 metres on his third attempt.
In the pole vault, Warner was fifth in his group at 4.7 metres.
Eaton’s Canadian wife Brianne Theisen-Eaton won bronze in the heptathlon Saturday, for Canada’s first track and field medal of the Games.