Karsten Warholm
The biggest question over the past month regarding the World Athletics Championships Oregon22 will be whether Karsten Warholm will compete.
It appears he will.
The men’s 400m hurdles world record-holder and 2020 Tokyo Olympic gold medalist is on the entry list for the event that begins with preliminary heats Saturday, the second day of competition. The semifinals are on Sunday with the final on July 19 being the final event of that day’s competition.
The availability of Warholm, who hasn’t completed a 400m hurdles race this season, certainly elevates the status of the event at the first World Athletics Championships on U.S. soil at the reimagined Hayward Field at the University of Oregon.
Warholm opened his season at the June 5 Diamond League meet in Rabat, Morocco. After hitting the first hurdle with his trail leg, the Norwegian superstar pulled up and did not finish the race. Afterward, he said he thought he had a hamstring injury.
Warholm has not competed since.
“I am looking forward to competing at Hayward Field again and also visiting Eugene," Warholm said. “I haven’t been there since 2014. I’m excited to see and run at the new stadium.”
When Warholm competes at Hayward Field, it will certainly be a different experience than his only other visit to Eugene.
In 2014, Warholm was an up-and-coming decathlete when he competed at the World U20 (Junior) Athletics Championships at Hayward Field. Now he’s one of the biggest superstars, if not the biggest superstar, in the sport, highlighted by his tour de force performance in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics when he and Rai Benjamin of the United States ran a race for the ages in which both runners smashed Warholm’s previous world record and Warholm won the gold medal.
“I love challenges and competing in different events gave me the motivation I needed in training and competitions," Warholm said. “I competed in combined events for some years, and it was very fun, but when my coach Leif Olav (Alnes) suggested to give 400-meter hurdles a chance, I agreed that it was worth a try for one season, but still I wanted to have my main focus on the combined events. We all know how that went.”
Anyone who watched the men’s 400m hurdles race at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics will likely never forget what they saw.
WATCH: The men’s 400m hurdles final at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics
Running out of lane 6, Warholm bolted to an early lead and led coming off the turn. Benjamin, in lane 5, appeared to be gaining on Warholm as they entered the home stretch, but Warholm remained ahead and won in 45.94 seconds, smashing his world record of 46.70 set earlier in the summer. Benjamin, who had run a personal best of 46.83 at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Track & Field, finished in 46.17 for the silver medal. The rest of the field rode their surge to national and area records.
Alison dos Santos of Brazil was third in 46.72 seconds, making him the third-fastest performer ever and under the 46.78 run by American Kevin Young in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics that was the world record until Warholm’s 46.70. His time was a South American area record. Kyron McMaster of the British Virgin Islands was fourth in a national-record 47.08, a time that would have won every previous Olympics except the Barcelona Olympics. Abderrahman Samba of Qatar was fifth in 47.12, followed by Turkey’s Yasmani Copello, who equaled a national record of 47.81, and Estonia’s Rasmus Magi, who set a national record of 48.11.
“That event was amazing," dos Santos said after winning the Prefontaine Classic in May at Hayward Field. “I don’t know how to describe that race. It was amazing, amazing.”
Many track and field historians were left scrambling for superlatives to describe the race afterward with some calling it the greatest race in track and field. For a race one lap in length or shorter, seeing three-quarters of a second shaved off the previous world record was hard to fathom.
“Time will show, I know many call it ‘the best race ever’ and for a good reason,” Warholm said. “It was an almost perfect race. I needed a while before I could fully process and believe it. It is an incredible time that I have worked very hard to achieve.”
Warholm started in track and field at age 7. Growing up, Warholm mostly focused on the 110m hurdles, high jump, long jump, and triple jump. In 2013, he competed in the boys U18 octathlon, an eight-event discipline that contests all of the events of the decathlon except the discus and pole vault and incorporates a 1,000m run instead of the 1,500m. Warholm won the Norwegian octathlon title with 5,946 points and then scored 6,451 points to win at the World Youth Championships in Donetsk, Ukraine.
That led Warholm into the decathlon the next season where he scored 7,137 points in a competition in May. At the 2014 World U20 (Junior) Athletics Championships at Hayward Field, Warholm was in third place after the first day with 4,238 points after turning in the top times in the 100m and 400m and a strong long jump. He was still third with 5,195 points through six events, but struggled in the discus and javelin on the second day and finished 10th overall with 7,551 points. Jiri Sykora of the Czech Republic won with 8,135 points to set a World U20 Championships record. Warholm also ran in the heats of the 4x100m relay for Norway.
“I have many good memories from the 2014 World Junior Championships in Hayward Field," Warholm said. “It was a very well-organized meeting and there was an enthusiastic audience in the stands cheering. I loved that. The weather was partly cold and rainy, so at some points it was tough conditions for the competition. I became number 10 and of course I was not happy with the result, but all in all quite happy with the total arrangement.”
That year was also the first time Warholm ran a 400m hurdles race as he won his only race in that event in 52.50 seconds.
In 2015, Warholm decided to make a change when he moved from his childhood home in Ulsteinvik, Norway, to Oslo and began working with the highly respected Alnes.
"I was ready to take the next step within athletics and I was very glad that Leif Olav, with his decades of experience, wanted to be a part of my team," Warholm said. “I didn't know then that I would not only get a good coach, but also a friend for life. Leif Olav means a lot to me.”
Alnes began coaching Warholm about a month after Warholm was second in the decathlon at the European Junior Championships, improving his personal best to 7,764 points. He also was the Norwegian junior champion in the 400m hurdles in 2015 and improved his personal best to 51.09 seconds.
In 2016, Warholm still competed in the sprints and long jump but dropped the decathlon. In his first 400m hurdles competition of the season, he lowered his personal best to 49.62 seconds and made another breakthrough at the European Championships when he won his semifinal heat in 48.84 seconds. He was sixth in the final.
“When I first decided to go for the 400-meter hurdles, it was not hard at all to give up the other events,” Warholm said. “The 400-meter hurdles give me the challenge I need to keep the motivation. There is always something to improve. Now, I keep my focus on the hurdles but maybe later in my career I will be ready to try another event. Time will show.”
Later that summer Warholm competed at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics as a 20-year-old. He won his opening-round heat in a national-record 48.49 seconds and in the semifinals, came up two spots short of the Olympic final.
“It was after the Olympics in Rio 2016 I really started to think that 400-meter hurdles could fit me well,” Warholm said. “Even though Leif Olav had said it for several months, I was not ready and convinced to let decathlon go. But after a while I realized that 10th place in an Olympic Championship with just a few months training was a very good result, and it was worth putting in some hard work for even more improvements.”
On his new hometown track in Oslo, Warholm won the 400m hurdles at the prestigious Bislett Games Diamond League meet in 2017 for his first Diamond League victory, improving his national record to 48.25 seconds. A month later in July, Warholm won the 400m hurdles and was second in the 400m at the European U23 Championships and was on his way to his first World Athletics Championships in London one month later.
WATCH: The 400m hurdles final at the 2017 World Athletics Championships
In London, Warholm posted the second-fastest semifinal time and then surprised the field by winning the final in 48.35 seconds to take the gold medal over Copello (48.49 seconds) and reigning Olympic champion Kerron Clement (48.52) of the United States.
Warholm said the Diamond League win in the Bislett Games was the moment that he felt he had arrived as a true world-class 400m hurdler and punctuated that feeling with the victory in London.
“The feeling I had after winning in London is something I never will forget,” Warholm said.
Warholm kept getting faster and kept winning after London. In 2018, he broke 48 seconds five of the 12 times he ran the 400m hurdles, including a time of 47.64 seconds to win the European Championships. The following season, Warholm ran a personal-best 45.05 seconds to win the 400m at the indoor European Championships as a prelude to another outdoor World Athletics Championships season. Between indoor and outdoor races in 2019 over 400m and the 400 hurdles, Warholm was 16-0.
The Warholm-Benjamin rivalry also took off in 2019. A month before the Doha World Athletics Championships, the duo became the third and fourth men in history to break 47 seconds in the 400m hurdles at the Zurich Diamond League meet when Warholm won in 46.92 seconds with Benjamin close behind in 46.98, just off Young’s world record of 46.78 seconds. It was more of the same in Doha at the World Athletics Championships. In the final, Warholm had a slight lead approaching the final hurdle and won in 47.22 seconds. Benjamin, who stretched for the final hurdle, and landed awkwardly, was second in 47.66 seconds with Samba a distant third.
WATCH: The 400m hurdles final at the 2019 World Athletics Championships
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Warholm threatened the world record several times in 2020. In a 35-day span beginning on Aug. 14, Warholm ran 47.10 seconds or faster in four of five races, including a personal best of 46.87.
In 2021, Benjamin fired the first shot, running 46.83 seconds in the final of the U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Track & Field on June 26. Five days later, in his season debut, Warholm thrilled the hometown fans at the Bislett Games when he ran 46.70 to break Young’s world record, which, at the time, was the oldest men’s track world record in track and field.
The stage was set for the Tokyo Olympics.
“I learned a lot at the Olympics in 2016," Warholm said. “Since it is the biggest stage within sport, I got prepared for what I could expect within that level. It has been an important experience for me, and it has been useful for all the seasons afterwards and of course during the Olympics in Tokyo last year.”
In the Olympic final, Warholm and Benjamin went all out from the start with the rest of the field in their wake. McMaster said he knew the field was in for a historically fast race from the start.
“After the second hurdle, I was like 'sh**,' " he said afterward.
Warholm led from the start. Coming into the homestretch, Benjamin appeared to be gaining, but Warholm found another gear and hit the finish line first. Warholm ripped apart his jersey in celebration and his mouth was agape in wonderment. He said afterward he wondered if there had been a timing malfunction in the display board positioned just inside the track at the finish line.
The race has been analyzed repeatedly since then. It was compared with Bob Beamon’s massive improvement of the long jump world record by 55 centimeters at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Some likened it to Usain Bolt dropping his 100m world record from 9.69 seconds to 9.58 at the 2009 World Athletics Championships in Beijing.
Whatever you call it, the hype of the 400m hurdles race in Tokyo exceeded expectations. The question then quickly became how much faster can Warholm, Benjamin and the rest run?
“It seems like 400 hurdles is quite popular now,” Warholm said, “and many people’s favorite event. I think that is fantastic and nice that the event is back in focus, it deserves it. 45.94 is an extremely good time, but nothing is impossible, so we must wait and see how the level will be in the future.”
The hype for the 400m hurdles will certainly be at an all-time high at WCH Oregon22 despite questions over Warholm’s health and fitness level. Dos Santos set the early world lead when he ran 47.24 second in a Diamond League meet in Doha on May 13 and beat Benjamin, who ran 47.49, for the first time. Dos Santos dropped the world lead to 47.23 by winning the Prefontaine Classic on May 28. Benjamin, who has had to overcome COVID-19 and hamstring tendonitis and didn’t compete after Doha until the three rounds at the U.S. Outdoor Championships in late June, took the world lead with his 47.04-second win on June 26. Four days later, dos Santos took back the world lead at 46.80 seconds by winning the Diamond League meet in Stockholm.
“All I know is that I’m on home soil and I’ve got the home crowd,” Benjamin said, “and it’s going to be special.”
The World Athletics Championships record is 47.12 seconds, set by Young in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1993, one year after his Olympic world-record run. Benjamin set the U.S. all-comers record and Hayward Field record of 46.83 in last year’s Olympic Trials. It’s hard to see either record surviving after the July 19 final. And the three medalists from Tokyo aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Warholm is 26, Benjamin turns 25 three days after WCH Oregon22 ends, and dos Santos turned 22 last month.
“I have not competed in 2022 yet and some of my competitors have had a few races,” Warholm said. “Both Alison dos Santos and Rai Benjamin seem to be my rivals this season as well, but there are also other strong 400 hurdles runners, so I think this season can be very exciting too. I’m looking forward to competing against them. They are all good sportsmen.”
By Ashley Conklin