A Canadian record and a hat trick are on the line when Damian Warner makes his season decathlon debut this weekend.
The 27-year-old from London, Ont., is the favourite to capture a third Hypo Meeting title in Gotzis, Austria, and his coach Les Gramantik believes Warner's national record could fall in the process.
"I wouldn't be surprised," Gramantik said. "But that doesn't mean that he will. I think the components are there. But it's a funny game -- you have a slip here, slip there ... ultimately the biggest challenge is to win, not just to score."
Warner won the prestigious Hypo Meeting, which brings together the world's top decathletes and heptathletes, in both 2013 and last year.
The event will be a good gauge of Warner's progress since he moved from London to Calgary in December to work with Gramantik. It will be the only international decathlon Warner will do before the world championships in London in August.
Warner, a world silver and bronze medallist, is a favourite to claim Canada's first decathlon world title, particularly after the retirement of American Ashton Easton, who's dominated the event for several years.
"Everybody feels all of a sudden a door swung wide open for Damian because Ashton is gone. But there's always going to be athletes out there who are capable," said Gramantik, who mentioned Kevin Mayer of France -- who edged Warner for silver in Rio -- and Lindon Victor of Grenada, who's shattered the NCAA record twice already this season.
"As I always say to people, 'Others also train. You're not the only one training.' But I think definitely it's a more wide-open opportunity to become world champion or to become an Olympic champion."
Warner's Canadian record of 8,695 points was set at the 2015 world championships in Beijing.
He's set personal bests in both discus and shot put already this season, and Gramantik said Warner is "running awfully fast."
The 67-year-old coach is best known for helping decathlete Michael Smith to world silver and bronze. He also coached Jessica Zelinka, who was fourth in the heptathlon at the 2008 Olympics and sixth in 2012 in London.
Gramantik said his coaching philosophy with Warner is simply to "build a better athlete."
"I want to increase his load tolerance, his capacity to train harder, and to keep him healthy," said Gramantik. "We identified certain areas that were weaker (pole vault is one), but I'm trying to approach it from where I think the strengths are, work on the strengths continuously and hopefully that will help take care of the weaknesses a little bit.
"You think of Zelinka in 2012, she looked fit, she was fit," Gramantik added. "And so that's what I wanted to do with him right now, as objective No. 1, make him a better athlete, more co-ordinated, we do a little bit more lifting than he's ever done, we train much harder than he's ever done. He's in very good shape and he's going to perform well."
The former head coach of Athletics Canada said he's grateful Warner decided to move west to train.
"It's a fun project for me, it's an incredible opportunity before I die to have an athlete of his calibre," Gramantik said with a laugh.
Warner's stiffest challenge in Gotzis should come from the German trio Kai Kazmirek, Rico Freimuth and Mathias Brugger.
