Holloway and Martinot-Lagarde in Belgrade hurdles head-to-head

Here’s the question if you are not Grant Holloway. How do you beat a man who hasn’t lost a 60m hurdles race in eight years – since he was 16, in fact – a total of victories that is now well past the half century mark?

Additional question. How do you beat a man who last year lowered the 60m hurdles world record of 7.30 – set by Britain’s Colin Jackson in 1994 – to 7.29?

But here’s the question if you are Grant Holloway. At last summer’s Tokyo Olympics, as world 110m hurdles champion, you were beaten to gold by Jamaica’s Hansle Parchment. So, as you seek a first world indoor title, could there be a similar shock in store at the World Athletics Indoor Championships Belgrade 22?

It has to be said that, barring accident or injury, Holloway looks very likely to be adding a second global gold to his collection on Sunday afternoon.

This season the 24-year-old from Chesapeake, Virginia, has continued to win in peerless fashion on the boards, recording a season’s best of 7.35.

But if you wanted to think of someone who might just find the way to confound Holloway’s winning ways this weekend, it would be Pascal Martinot-Lagarde.

The 30-year-old Frenchman has a face that always appears on the brink of a smile – that is, if he is not actually smiling. But this most amiable of men has fully demonstrated the iron part of his character over the years as he has come back from a sequence of injuries to return his form to its former heights.

In 2018 he completed a hat-trick of European titles in Berlin, taking gold on a photo-finish. A year later he earned a first world outdoor medal, bronze, in Doha.

Martinot-Lagarde’s record indoors is at least as good. He has a gold, two silvers and a bronze at the European Indoor Championships; two silvers and a bronze in the World Indoors.

An exuberant athlete, he has the champion’s knack of raising his game when it is most needed.

Not that Martinot-Lagarde will be the only serious threat to the equally exuberant US athlete.

His French teammate Wilhem Belocian won the European 60m hurdles title in Torun last year in a personal best of 7.42 – 0.03 faster than Martinot-Lagarde’s best.

Holloway’s compatriot Jarret Eaton also has serious credentials as a 7.43 athlete who has run 7.47 this year.

And Poland’s Damian Czykier will be on a high after his victory on the home ground of Torun in last month’s World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold meeting in 7.48 – a massive personal best.

Britain’s defending champion Andy Pozzi has clocked 7.59 this season, a little off his personal best of 7.43, but his performance in the last Indoor Tour Gold meeting before the Belgrade 2022 event, at Madrid on 2 March, boded ill as he scraped through his heat after clocking 7.73 but did not start the final.

In his absence his British teammate Dave King had an outstanding night, finishing third in a personal best of 7.57 that bodes well for him.

Mike Rowbottom for World Athletics