Pan Am Games: Damian Warner stretches decathlon lead

After what was a night to remember for Canada team at the Pan Am Games Wednesday, seeing Andre De Grasse win the headline 1o0m dash, the Thursday morning session at CIBC Pan Am Stadium saw a slower schedule, filled largely with 200m heats. Still, it was a successful morning for Canadian athletes, the team qualifying all four of it’s 200m runners.

First Raquel Tjernagel and Kimberly Hyacinthe both qualified for tonight’s semifinal running 23.63 and 23.30 in the first and third heats, respectively.

Shortly after, Brendon Rodney finished third in his heat running 20.43 to qualify, bested by Rasheed Dwyer of Jamaica and Yancarlos Martinez of the Dominican Republic in first and second.

Doubling back after what was described last night as the best night of his life, De Grasse, Canada’s new sprint superstar, cruised through his 200m heat, running 20.17 to find himself a spot in tonight’s semifinal.

Damian Warner, setting himself up for a strong afternoon, stretched his lead in the men’s decathlon, first opening the day with one of his strongest events, the 110m hurdles, running 13.44, the best of the field, before heading to the discus, one of his weaker events. The discus, though still one of his weaker events, saw a personal bets toss of 47.56m, a personal best, leaving him with 6328 points going into the final three events, 256 points ahead of Felipe Dos Santos of Brazil. The men’s decathlon will finish off Thursday’s evening session at 8:50 p.m.

Thursday’s evening session will showcase two of Canada’s top distance runner’s in the women’s 10,000m. Lanni Marchant, the national record-holder in the marathon is stepping down in distance to race the track alongside national 10,000m record-holder Natasha Wodak. The race will be run at 7:40 p.m.

Other finals filling the evening are the men’s 400m hurdles, the men’s and women’s 400m and the men’s 800m, though no Canadians have qualified to race any of these events.