Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
Damian Warner captured Canada's first Olympic decathlon title in emphatic fashion.
The 31-year-old from London, Ont., smashed the Canadian and Olympic record and became the fourth man in history to break the elusive 9,000-point barrier at the Tokyo Olympics on Thursday.
Warner capped off the gruelling 10-discipline event with a fifth-place finish in the 1,500 metres - an event he jokingly said he loathes - to finish with 9,018 points, bettering the previous Olympic record of 8,893 points, shared between Ashton Eaton of the United States (2016) and Roman Sebrle of the Czech Republic (2004).
World record-holder Kevin Mayer of France won silver with 8,726 points while Australian Ashley Moloney took bronze with 8,649. Pierce LePage of Whitby, Ont., who'd been flirting with bronze through the first eight events, finished fifth with 8,604.
The gold was a long time coming for Warner, who won bronze at the 2016 Rio Olympics and silver at the 2015 world championships.
"I remember sitting on the ground after and being disappointed," Warner said. "I just had the bronze medal but I was like, 'This is not what I wanted.' I wasn't proud to be an Olympic bronze medalist. We worked really hard since then to get to this point. I knew that when I went out there, I was like, I'm just going to give it my all and I'm going to finish strong."
The camaraderie in the event was evident when Warner staggered across the 1,500 finish line and was wrapped in hugs by Mayer and Moloney. Warner posed for photos, wearing the Canadian flag like Superman's cape. He went up into the crowd to hug a teary-eyed coach Gar Leyshon.
Warner was excellent from start to finish. He tied his decathlon world mark in the 100 metres, and then set Olympic decathlon records in the long jump and 110-metre hurdles. He cleared a personal best 4.90 metres in the pole vault on Thursday afternoon.
The track and field community considers the Olympic decathlon winner the "world's greatest athlete."
Canadian Dave Steen won bronze at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, then Warner captured bronze in 2016 in Rio.
Just 14 hours after racing to gold in the men's 200 final, Andre De Grasse, meanwhile, ran a sizzling anchor leg to put Canada's 4x100 relay into Friday's final.
Jamaica had the fastest time on the morning with 37.82, while China ran 37.92 for second place over Canada in a decision that was determined by thousandths of a second in a photo finish.
Aaron Brown, who was sixth in Wednesday's 200 metres, ran the lead-off leg, followed by Jerome Blake and Brendon Rodney. Racing for the seventh time of these Games, De Grasse took the baton from Rodney in about fifth place, before churning down the home stretch to cross the line alongside China.
Warner is also a world silver medallist, and he said watching Canada's Andre De Grasse win gold in the 200 metres on Wednesday night was inspiring. Like Warner, De Grasse had won numerous silver and bronze on the world stage before earning his gold.
Warner is coming off an extraordinary winter that saw him train in an empty, unheated hockey arena that his coaches converted to a multi-events facility after COVID-19 shut down the University of Western Ontario fieldhouse. He and his coaches built a long jump pit, brought in a pole jump pit, built a throwing circle and laid down a 40-metre section of track.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 5, 2021.
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
The CFL suspended Toronto Argonauts quarterback Chad Kelly for at least nine regular-season games Tuesday following its investigation into a lawsuit filed by a former strength-and-conditioning coach against both the player and club.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.