Derek Drouin 7th at Monaco Diamond League
World champion has yet to exceed 2.30 metres in 2016
By Callum Ng
Derek Drouin couldn't manage a season's best at the Stade Louis II, en route to a seventh-place finish in high jump on a sombre day at the Monaco Diamond League.
Monaco is only 21 kilometres from Nice, France, where a Thursday attack killed at least 84 people.
Organizers decided the meet "will be kept strictly to the sporting events with no festivities."
Drouin is the reigning world champion but he stalled at 2.31 metres Thursday after clearing 2.17, 2.22, and 2.27 without dropping the bar once.
Italy's Gianmarco Tamberi jumped 2.39 to win the event.
Drouin, 26, has a season's best of 2.30 from the recent Olympic trials in Edmonton, where he qualified for his second Olympics. His personal best is 2.40 from back in 2014. The native of Corunna, Ont., won the bronze medal at the London Olympics.
There were other Canadian Olympians in action on Friday. Brandon McBride ran to fourth in the 800 with a time of 1:44.90. Charles Philibert-Thiboutot was 11th in the 1,500, running a season's best 3:34.24 and Nicole Sifuentes finished sixth in the women's 3,000.
Elsewhere on the track South African runner Caster Semenya won the women's 800 with a blistering time of one minute 55.33 seconds. It is the world-leading time in the event by almost one full second.
Monaco is the ninth of 14 elite Diamond League meets, the next is July 22-23 in London.