Meet Canada's other decathlon medal threat at the Games
With two events remaining in the decathlon at the 2019 world championships, Canadian Pierce LePage was in the gold medal position.
He threw the javelin, poorly, and fell to fifth place, where he would remain after the 1,500 metres, the last of 10 events spread over two intense days of competition.
It was nonetheless an auspicious worlds debut for the Whitby, Ont., native, who also won a silver at his first Commonwealth Games in 2018 and bronze at his first Pan Am Games in 2019, finishing behind fellow Canadian Damian Warner at each event.
With the first Olympics of LePage's competitive career on the immediate horizon, he's in good shape, having finished second, again, to Warner at the prestigious Hypo meeting in Götzis, Austria at the end of May.
“I know what I can do. I know what I'm good at. I know if I just do what I need to do, I should be contesting medals pretty easily in Tokyo and that's what I plan to do,” said LePage.
The 25-year-old is mentally tough enough to back up a bold statement like that, which might raise some eyebrows. If it brings the spotlight, so be it.
“I feel like I'm pretty good at mentally dealing with outside pressure. I don't really mind if I'm in the spotlight or not in the spotlight, I just kind of focus on myself. People will be like, `Pierce is pretty chill, pretty quiet, he does his own thing.' That's kind of my style. I guess I'm good at being second (in Canada).”
He also knows he has put in the work necessary to improve his throws and 1,500m time, the events that traditionally drag down his score. He persevered through lengthy COVID-19 training facility lockdowns and kept a good attitude, which isn't hard for such a happy-go-lucky athlete.
At Götzis, LePage won the 400m, finished in the top eight in eight events, and put up a personal best score of 8,534 points. Warner, a 31-year-old from London, Ont., won five events at Götzis and scored a Canadian record 8,995 points.
The Ontario-born duo will push each other to come up large in Tokyo later this month.
“When I first went to Götzis (in 2017) and then the Commonwealth Games (in 2018), I was a young athlete,” LePage recalled. “I didn't really know what I was doing, so it was always nice to have another competitor from my country there to support me and kind of show me the ropes on everything. Damian has always been there for me the last couple years.
“We compete against each other and we are competitive but I wouldn't say it's a rivalry. It's been good. We push each other to get better.”