Damian Warner

Damian David George Warner was born on 4 November 1989 in London, Ontario, to Kevin Warner and Brenda Philpott. As a child he wrote in a school project that he would be in the Olympics one day. He developed into a decathlete, the athlete who competes in ten events over two days, and became one of the greatest the sport has produced.

Warner finished fifth at the 2012 London Olympics, a jump of 335 points over his previous best, and in 2013 won world championship bronze. He won decathlon gold at the 2014 Commonwealth Games and the 2015 Pan American Games, and at the 2015 World Championships he set a national record of 8,695 points to win silver, behind the world record of Ashton Eaton.

At the 2016 Rio Olympics Warner won decathlon bronze with 8,666 points, the first Canadian Olympic decathlon medal since Dave Steen's bronze in 1988. He won another world bronze in 2019 and a record eight titles at the famous Hypo-Meeting in Austria. In May 2021 he scored 8,995 points at Götzis, the fifth highest total in history, and arrived in Tokyo as the world's leading decathlete.

At the Tokyo Games, held in August 2021, Warner led the decathlon from start to finish. He set Olympic bests in the 100 metres, tying his own decathlon best of 10.12 seconds, in the long jump with 8.24 metres, and in the 110 metres hurdles at 13.46 seconds. He finished with 9,018 points, an Olympic record and a Canadian record, eclipsing Ashton Eaton's 8,893 and becoming just the fourth man in history to pass 9,000.

He became Canada's first Olympic decathlon champion and the holder of the unofficial title of the world's greatest athlete, and he carried the flag for Canada at the closing ceremony. He returned for a fourth Olympic Games in Paris in 2024, and his Olympic record of 9,018 points still stands.