Canadian medal shutout lingers
Warner fifth in decathlon, runners come up short with one day left in London
LONDON— Damian Warner’s energy and medal hopes in the decathlon were stripped by a virus, while Mohammed Ahmed felt good but just didn’t have the gear he needed for the final lap of his 5,000-metre race.
On a night when even world greats Usain Bolt and Mo Farah couldn’t win, Canada still couldn’t get on the board at the world athletics championships.
A team that came here looking to win at least eight medals enters the last day with none.
Tired and frustrated was the theme of the night here, which also saw the men’s 4x100-metre relay finish in a disappointing sixth place.
“It sucks,” Ahmed said, after fading from medal contention in the final few hundred metres to finish sixth.
“They accelerated and I was right with Mo (Farah), and Mo dug really deep and I was like all right, do the same thing. And I just couldn’t get to that gear fast enough. It’s frustrating,” said the St. Catharines, Ont., runner who also broke the Canadian record to finish eighth in the 10,000 on the first day of the championships.
“A lot of people would probably hang it up or just say ‘I’m not good enough,’ but I’m not like that. I’ve always believed in myself and always expected myself to do great things.”
His plan now: “Patch up these scars and see what I have for the rest of the season.”
Britain’s Farah, who has won every 5,000 and10,000 outdoor final he has contested in the last six seasons, had to settle for silver, while Ethiopia’s Muktar Edris took the gold.
And Bolt, in what was supposed to be his glorious farewell, pulled up with a hamstring cramp early in the anchor leg of the 4x100-metre relay for Jamaica and didn’t finish the race, let alone win it. That meant Canada, which won bronze in Rio last summer, finished second-last, just ahead of Turkey.
“Obviously this championship wasn’t the best for our sprint group, but we know we have the talent and the people there to challenge for medals and we’ll be better next time,” said Toronto’s Aaron Brown, who ran the second leg of the relay.
Brown was ill and quarantined with the stomach virus sweeping through the team hotel early in the week, and when he got back on the track after that he was disqualified for stepping on the line in his 200-metre heat.
“Knowing that I’m in great shape and I can’t show it — it’s just really frustrating,” he said.
As he walked off the track downcast with his relay teammates, he was already thinking to the weeks ahead and how he could get into some other meets before the season ends.
“I want to run as soon as possible, because I don’t want to have this go to waste.”
Canada’s team has certainly had more than its share of challenges.
There have been injuries — sprint star Andre De Grasse and Olympic high jump champion Derek Drouin both pulled out with injuries before they even got a chance to compete — and a stomach virus that left a handful of athletes, including Brown and Warner, ill and quarantined for days.
Canada’s hopes of leaving London with any medals at all, almost unbelievably, now rest on a trio of race walkers and 800-metre runner Melissa Bishop, the last Canadians to compete on Sunday.
Right now, Warner’s fifth-place finish in the decathlon is the team’s highest result.
“There are some positives to take away. They’re just really hard to find right now,” Warner said after the 1,500 metres, the final event of his gruelling two-day decathlon.
It’s the first time since the 2012 London Olympics — when he first shot to prominence in the same London Stadium with a surprise fifthplace finish — that he hasn’t finished on the podium in a major global championship.
But Warner became ill, suspected to be Norovirus, just three days before his event began.
He struggled on day one — normally his best points day, but also the most physically demanding and his fatigued body wasn’t ready. He was sitting fourth after five events.
Day two proved to be an even greater mental battle, and knowing the only way he’d get to the podium was if disaster struck athletes ahead of him wasn’t the kind of motivation that could sustain him through five tough events.
“Usually you go into the 1,500 and you have all these nerves. You have a goal, catch this person or don’t let this person pass you. Today it was just finish,” he said.
“That was the goal today.”