Karsten Warholm celebrates his 400m hurdles win at the World Athletics Championships Doha 2019 (© Getty Images)
Karsten Warholm, Norway’s Olympic and world 400m hurdles champion, says he is back to full health and ready to compete after sustaining a hamstring injury early in the season.
Warholm had a rough start to his 2022 campaign in June, when he clipped the first hurdle at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Rabat and pulled up, clutching his right leg. What he initially thought to be a cramp in his hamstring turned out to be a small tear.
He has not competed since. But now, Warholm approaches a competitive contest to defend his title at the World Athletics Championships Oregon22.
“It's going to be challenging in the sense that I don't know what I can bring to the table,” Warholm said. “But I know for sure that all the training until the injury happened was very good.”
Brazil’s Olympic bronze medallist Alison dos Santos has the world leading time so far this season of 46.80, set when winning at the Diamond League in Stockholm. USA’s Rai Benjamin got silver behind Warholm at both the 2019 World Championships and last year’s Olympic Games in Tokyo, and has a season’s best of 47.04.
It was at the Tokyo Olympics that Warholm improved his own world record to a staggering 45.94 in one of the finest races in athletics history. Benjamin clocked 46.17, a performance that would have broken the previous world record, while Dos Santos ran 46.72 for a mark inside the world record that had belonged to Kevin Young from 1992 until Warholm broke it in July 2021.
Karsten Warholm breaks the world 400m hurdles record to win Olympic gold ahead of Rai Benjamin and Alison dos Santos (© Getty Images)
To maintain his claim as world champion, Warholm has spent the last five weeks working to recoup his fitness. He said that preparing for this event with a focus on being healthy is not ideal, and is “probably the hardest task” of his career.
With the help of his coach, Leif Olav Alnes, Warholm has been training at the University of California in Berkeley. He said his recent performances in training compare to benchmarks he set in previous seasons.
“I’m the world defender and if I’m going there, it’s because I feel like I have something to come with,” he said. “Now I can say that I feel good to go. And when I feel good to go, I’m going to go 100%.”
The 26-year-old is also relishing the chance to return to global competition at Hayward Field, where he contested the decathlon at the World Athletics U20 Championships in 2014.
“There was a great atmosphere and a packed stadium, it’s an audience that knows their track and field very well,” he said. “That was one of my last decathlons and it was pretty special to be here.”
Warholm added that in the 400m hurdles, “there’s no compensating”. He knows that going up against Benjamin, who will be competing on home soil, and Dos Santos will not be easy.
“They won’t be giving me any slack, that’s for sure,” Warholm added. “The level is very good right now, probably one of the best eras of the event.”
But to Warholm, the competition is a welcome challenge.
“This is what I love to do, I’m a very competitive person. If I’m on the line, I want there to be competition. I want to have a good fight,” he said. “That is what brings excitement to the sport.”
Madeline Ryan for World Athletics
