Warner, Johnson-Thompson lead Hypo Meeting after 1st day

GOETZIS, Austria – Canadian decathlete Damian Warner led the Hypo Meeting after the first five events on Saturday, while Britain’s Katarina Johnson-Thompson built a slim lead in the women’s heptathlon.

Eyeing his third win after 2013 and last year, Olympic bronze medallist Warner, from London, Ont., gathered 4,532 points and was 153 ahead of Pierce LePage of Whitby, Ont., for a Canadian 1-2 lead. Oleksiy Kasyanov of Ukraine trailed by 180 points in third.

The meet will be Warner’s only international decathlon before the world championships in London in August.

In her first heptathlon since the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, Johnson-Thompson ran her second fastest 200 metres ever in 22.81 second and finished on 4,059 to take a three-point lead over Olympic champion Nafissatou Thiam of Belgium. Carolina Schaefer of Germany was just three points further back in third.