Warner cracks 9000 as heat claims contenders
Even for the athletes good enough and brave enough to take on the decathlon or the heptathlon at the Olympics, Tokyo was next-level hard.
Injuries took out world champions, world-record holders, goldmedal contenders and more.
By the end of the two days, which covered 10 events for the men and seven for the women, all in hot, steamy conditions, Damian Warner of Canada had won his first Olympic title and Nafissatou Thiam of Belgium had defended hers. Was it worth it?
“I was just looking forward to being done with it,” Thiam said.
That she finished was great. Winning gold even better. Even more impressive considering those who didn’t make it to the final events — the 1500m for men and 800m for women.
World champion and gold medal contender Katarina Johnson-Thompson of Britain left on the first day with a torn right calf muscle. She waved off a wheelchair and decided that, at the very least, she would finish her 200m race before withdrawing.
She did, but at a limp, not a sprint and was disqualified from the race for stepping out of her lane.
Decathlon world champion Niklas Kaul wasn’t able to do that. He exited on a wheelchair after breaking down halfway through his 400m race at the end of the opening day when his injured right foot gave in.
It continued on Thursday. World record holder Kevin Mayer hung on for silver despite a back injury, finishing just 77 points ahead of
21-year-old Australian Ash Moloney. He said he couldn’t be disappointed with second.
“It’s pretty good to have a medal in that condition,” he said, hand on his back and wincing.
Warner dragged himself over the finish line in 4m 31.08s in the 1500m to confirm gold. He became just the fourth man to break the revered
9000-point mark, along with Roman Sebrle, Ashton Eaton and Mayer.
Warner set an Olympic record with a total of 9018, beating the mark of
8893 shared by Sebrle (2004) and Eaton (2016).
“It’s one of those moments when all the dreams you had as a kid finally came through and I don’t know how to react,” the 31-year-old Warner said.
And then, in a far grittier assessment, the Olympic decathlon champion — the best all-around athlete in the world for some — explained how it really felt to have to race those final four laps having already run and jumped and thrown to his body’s limit through nine previous events.
“I’ve never had fun running the 1500,” he said. “Not one time.”
Not even this time, when it delivered an Olympic gold to top his bronze from Rio in 2016 and three world championship podiums.
This year’s multi-eventers had more than just the typical punishing physical demands to deal with; those come with the job. Thiam also lost her coach for the crucial final day after he tested positive for Covid-19 and went into quarantine.
“That wasn’t easy,” she said. “That was a hard moment when they told me he wouldn’t be there. It took me a moment to get my mind together and just be fully focused again.”
She refocused well enough to retain her title and there were smiles on the track at the end. But her voice broke and she held back tears when she spoke later, taken to the limit physically but also emotionally as the scorching heat and humidity at the Olympic Stadium had many of the competitors donning ice vests and dumping ice inside and over their hats to try stay cool.
Warner called his ice vest his “life vest”; his “life saver”.
“The heat was spanking, it was spanking,” said Maicel Uibo of Estonia, the silver medallist at the worlds in 2019 who finished 15th this time. But he finished.
It all begged the question: Why even take up the decathlon or heptathlon? Some posed that to Warner: Do you regret choosing to be a decathlete?
“All the time,” he said. “We’ve had the unfortunate luck of being good at something like the decathlon.
“As you get near the end, you think, why do I do this? And then you finish, and you’re like, I can’t wait to do the next one. It’s a weird thing.”