The history books tell us that Alexander the Great wept salt tears when he realised in his early 30s that he had no more worlds to conquer, having amassed a sizeable empire in the preceding years.

Still a few years shy of his own 30th birthday celebrations, Grant Holloway cleared the final hurdle left to elude him on the global stage last year – Olympic gold – and was, in contrast, all smiles in Paris having achieved the feat.

Since his shock defeat to Hansie Parchment at the Tokyo Olympics three years earlier, Holloway has clearly been the dominant sprint hurdler of his generation.

In the haze of that Parisian summer, the US athlete said: “To complete the career grand slam is what I’ve been wanting. I knew I was in shape, I knew I was capable of completing this feat.”

Two world titles followed in Oregon and then Budapest over 110m while he again beat the world’s best over the shorter distance of 60m to seal global indoor titles in 2022 and 2024.

But rather than rest on his laurels at the age of 27 with the set of global titles complete last year, instead he has set his sights on adding a third world indoor title to those won before, most recently in Glasgow last year.

“I’m in great shape, I just wanted to keep this going,” he said last year, looking beyond the Olympic Games. “I’m looking forward to what’s to come. The future is so bright.”

Rather than tail off after the high of an Olympic year – a fate that has befallen plenty of other elite athletes in the past – Holloway has continued to go from strength to strength already in the early months of this year. Once more he is the benchmark for his discipline, having clocked a world-leading 7.36 in Lievin last month.

He faces a duel threat to his hegemony this week, his compatriot Cameron Murray only just five hundredths of a second slower in 2025 as well as the recently crowned European indoor champion Jakob Szymanski, who earlier this year reduced the Polish indoor record to 7.39.

The 22-year-old had been the quickest man in Europe this year and lived up to that billing in Apeldoorn to edge out France’s Wilhelm Belocian and Just Kwaou-Mathey to go one better than the silver he had won in Istanbul two years prior.

Szymanski looks the best set to upset the dual US threat but Belocian is another notable obstacle having recently won a US$10,000 bonus for topping the World Indoor Tour series in the discipline. As a result, he earned himself an automatic wildcard spot for Nanjing.

Home hopes will be carried by 21-year-old Liu Junxi, who represented China at the Paris Olympics. He narrowly missed making the 60m hurdles final in Glasgow last year, but this season has improved to 7.47 – a time he recorded in Nanjing.

Matt Majendie for World Athletics

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