Warholm, the winner who has taken all, re-booting his career in Rabat

What do you do when you’ve done it all? That was a question Karsten Warholm posed for himself in Tokyo last year by winning the Olympic 400m hurdles title in an unearthly world record of 45.94. But he’s figured it out. He’s going to push on.

“One thing is success and another thing is repeating success,” the 26-year-old Norwegian said on the eve of his first race of the year in the fourth Wanda Diamond League meeting of the season in Rabat on Sunday (5). “It is actually more difficult to repeat it. And that is a task that I’m up for.

“I feel like we’ve pushed a level very, very far when it comes to performance. When you run 45.94 it’s putting a mark that nobody has ever seen and that also means that you are now walking a path that nobody has walked before you. So now it’s up to me and my coach to be able to find the ways we want to walk now. And for us it’s been all about putting in more work to see if there’s any more to get.

“That’s the reason I didn’t do indoors this year. I am looking forward to getting back to indoor running in the future, but I didn’t prioritise it this year. And I hope that now, coming into the summer and the important part of the track season, I am more prepared and very eager to run and I’m really looking forward to getting started.

“Because everything that I can win in 400m hurdles I’ve won and all the records I’ve taken. Now we go back to the reason why I started doing this in the beginning. Now it’s all about seeing how good I can become. I think I am entering a new part of my career, because now there’s very big expectations on me, and for me to be living up to them – the journey starts here in Rabat.

“Of course I am looking to have a good race. That’s something I put a lot of pride into – when I go to a competition I want to deliver. I’m not just coming here to show my face, I want to talk with my feet as well.

“I love to compete. I am always ready to fight, and I love a good fight. So hopefully it will be a good fight tomorrow, and for the World Championships and the European Championships this year.”

Sitting next to Warholm was the man who won Morocco’s only medal – a golden one – at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, 3000m steeplechaser Soufiane El Bakkali.

The 26-year-old from Fez, whose Olympic gold came after missing out on a medal by one place at Rio 2016, and World Championships where he took silver and then bronze, was happy to respond to questions by local journalists seeking to know how much joy he was about to bring to watching fans in the Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium tomorrow evening.

But he was careful to point out that this was a race for which he would be preparing like any other – and also that the field, which contains the two athletes who followed him home in Tokyo – Ethiopia’s Lamecha Girma and Benjamin Kigen of Kenya – as well as France’s Rio 2016 bronze medallist, Mahiedine Mekhissi, was formidable.

His victory at the opening Wanda Diamond League meeting of the season in Doha last month established him atop this year’s world lists with 8:09.66, before Girma ran 7:58.68 in Ostrava. But El Bakkali especially welcomed the chance to talk about his subsequent success at the World Athletics Continental Tour Gold meeting in Nairobi.

 

“I am glad to be asked about that,” he said. “It was a very valuable experience to collect, to win in Kenya. Because this event has been a Kenyan speciality for so long.

“So this win in Kenya will be a big encouragement to me as I look to the World Championships that will start so soon in Eugene.

“And while there are pressures involved in competing in our own country, we hope we will be able to deal with this and move into a new phase for this season.”

Having achieved Olympic success, adding a gold to his current collection of world silver and bronze is a top priority for Morocco’s local hero.

Strangely, despite having won two individual golds in both 100m and 200m at the Olympics, Jamaica’s Elaine Thompson-Herah is also still searching for a first individual world gold, having earned 200m silver in 2015. It is a state of affairs she is eager to correct, although she insisted that, despite her super-fast start to the season at the last Diamond League meeting in Eugene, where she clocked 10.79, she is not in peak shape. 

“I think it would be very important to me to add that gold to my tally,” she said. “I have five Olympic gold medals, and in the World Championships I only have a silver. And I think it’s important for me to get that and I am working towards that. I don’t want to be only an Olympic baby – I want a taste of that gold from the World Championships.

“And the fact that it is closer to home this year means that I will be more flexible and comfortable.”

On the inevitable subject of the world record, she responded: “I would love to break the world record but I’m in no rush, so if I don’t get it this year I have next year and the year after. I have some challenges this season early on, so I don’t think I’m in the best shape right now.

“But whenever I am in the best shape of my life I will try to break that record. Last year I ran 10.54 not knowing I could run that time. And in Tokyo I ran an Olympic record of 10.61 and I think that was not the best shape of my life yet.

“Even though this year I changed coach, I’m now working with my husband, I think I’m on the right path even though I had some challenges early on. But never say never, I’m still here trying, I want to hit that record, I know I can do it, I have that in me.

“It’s just about getting my mind and my body and everything right on that day. You have to get everything together, and I don’t think I’m in that shape right now. But if I can do that I can definitely hit that target.”

Like Thompson-Herah, the woman sitting alongside her, world indoor pole vault champion Sandi Morris of the United States, is also in search of a world outdoor gold this year, and has also recently switched coaches.

Morris is now being guided by former US vaulter Brad Walker and thus working alongside the fellow US athlete who won Tokyo gold last year, Katie Nageotte.

“I’ve won a world indoor title twice in my career and a world outdoor gold has eluded me so far,” Morris said.

“I would love to break that streak, especially given the Championships will take place on my home soil in Eugene, with American flags in the stands. That is going to be something that I and other US athletes have never experienced before, to have that much support at the World Championships. I’m getting chills just thinking about.”

Reflecting upon her year so far, Morris – who heads this year’s outdoor world list with 4.73m, said: “Consistency is key, and I’ve been in the 4.70m range and jumped 4.80m indoors a couple of times, so I feel confident that I’m really consistent at those heights.

“I just changed coaches this season, and so to be able to be that consistent under a new training programme, working on new technical things, it just shows that the future is bright for this season. I feel like I’m right there ready to make a breakthrough physically, I feel like I have had more time to prepare for this outdoor season and indoor was helping me build up that basework.

“I feel like I’m right there looking up at 4.90m, and I haven’t jumped five metres since 2016 and changing coaches was a big incentive for that. I felt like I’d plateaued for a couple of seasons. I feel like I’m still capable of jumping five metres, I just have to make some changes. That’s my goal really, to get back to five metres territory.”

Morris is operating in a new spirit having endured, like everyone else, the disruptions of the pandemic and, in her case, untimely injury last summer which undermined her Olympic ambitions.

“Last year was a wake-up call for me,” she said. “And so was Covid, and things getting postponed. And it was kind of a realisation that you never know if it will be your last time on the runway. You never know if an injury is waiting just around the corner, or a pandemic, or God knows what that is going to make it impossible for you to continue in the sport.

“So I have seen it in that light. The injury last year has been my motivation to take advantage of every time I run down that runway, I run down like it might be the last jump of my career. So my eyes are on the future and in the present, working on things down the runway to make every jump I do better. So I feel motivated, I feel positive and I feel really good in my new training situation.”

For Kenny Bednarek of the United States, 200m silver medallist at the Tokyo Games, tomorrow will mark a huge affirmation of a long journey given that he made his first international appearance in Rabat the last time the Diamond League was held here in 2019.

Meanwhile, Greece’s Olympic long jump gold medallist Miltiadis Tentoglou, who has built upon his Tokyo success by winning the world indoor title this year with a national indoor record of 8.55m, has set himself a specific task tomorrow – namely to beat the decathlete who tops the world list with his huge effort of 8.45m in the recent Gotzis multi-event meeting, Switzerland’s Simon Ehammer.

“So many jumpers train for years and they can not do this result,” he said. “So yes, it would be good not only for me to defeat him, but I need to defend the long jump pride.”

Mike Rowbottom for World Athletics