Former WPIAL track star Ayden Owens-Delerme, who entered Saturday in contention for a medal, finished ninth in the decathlon while making his Olympic debut in Paris. The North Allegheny graduate accumulated 8,437 points in the 10-event competition held over two days at the 80,000-seat Stade de France. A former college champion at Southern Cal, Michigan and Arkansas, the 24-year-old Owens-Delerme was competing internationally for Puerto Rico. Norway’s Markus Rooth won the gold with 8,796 points, followed by Germany’s Leo Neugebauer (8,748) and Grenada’s Lindon Victor (8,711). The decathlon started with a 22-person field. Owens-Delerme started Day 2 in second place in the overall standings with the 110-meter hurdles, discus, pole vault, javelin and 1,500-meter run left on the schedule. As a five-time state hurdles champion in high school, the 110s are among his stronger events. But Owens-Delerme posted a time Saturday that was a half-second off his personal best. He ran 14.09 and placed seventh, finishing behind six athletes in his own heat. He had run a season-best 13.68 in April and had a career-best 13.59 last summer. Canada’s Damian Warner won the hurdles in 13.62 seconds. Owens-Delerme remained second in the overall standings after the hurdles but with little room for error. A 17th-place finish in discus, an eighth-place finish in pole vault and a 19th-place finish in javelin dropped Owens-Delerme to sixth in the standings after nine events. He threw the discus 43.36 meters (142 feet, 3 inches), vaulted 4.8 meters (15 feet, 9 inches) and tossed the javelin 51.17 meters (167 feet, 10 inches). The last event was the 1,500 meters, where Owens-Delerme ran a season-best 4:40.39 to place 12th in the 20-person race. His finish left him ninth in the overall standings. Owens-Delerme had sprinted into medal contention on Friday with boosts from a victory in the 400 meters and a second-place finish in the 100. He’d qualified for the Olympics with a personal-best score of 8,732 points in April at the Mt. SAC Relays in Walnut, Calif. Chris Harlan is a TribLive reporter covering sports. He joined the Trib in 2009 after seven years as a reporter at the Beaver County Times. He can be reached at charlan@triblive.com. Remove the ads from your TribLIVE reading experience but still support the journalists who create the content with TribLIVE Ad-Free. Get Ad-Free > Sign Up for NotificationsStay up-to-date on important news from TribLIVE