Karsten Warholm (26) will make his season debut outdoors in Rabat’s Diamond League competition on 5 June. It was announced by the organizer in Morocco on Monday morning.
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– That is right. This can easily be justified by the fact that I feel ready, and that Rabat is a great chance to start the Diamond League season. In addition, I need some points to get to the (Diamond League) final in Zurich, and this will be a great opportunity to collect points before the championships start, writes Karsten Warholm in a message.
Norway’s Olympic gold medalist and world record holder in the 400 meter hurdles will run the favorite distance at Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium in Rabat. This means that he will start in competition a week and a half before the Bislett Games on 16 June, and three weeks after his closest competitors made their season debut in Doha on 13 May.
Then Alison dos Santos won in front of Rai Benjamin. The Brazilian, who took the bronze medal behind Warholm in the Tokyo Olympics last year, got the time 47.24, 25/100 ahead of the US Olympic silver winner Rai Benjamin.
Abderrahman Samba did not start at home. According to a publication on the Qatari’s Instagra account, he is said to have sustained a serious injury during the warm-up: Torn muscle on the back of the thigh.
As far as VG knows, Karsten Warholm will have trained a lot from already right after the end of the season last year. At Easter, he carried out a particularly long training session in Vallhall. It should have lasted for nine hours and 40 minutes.
He is said to have received an attractive offer to run 400 meters hurdles – against Rai Benjamin – in Eugene on 28 May. He declined due to the long journey and the time difference of nine hours. Four years ago, after Warholm’s first World Cup gold, the organizer in Oregon on the west coast of the USA offered him close to 400,000 kroner to start.
The World Athletics Championships take place in Eugene from 15 to 24 July. One month later it is the European Championships in Munich. There he can run 400 meters hurdles and 400 meters flatas he did at the European Championships in Berlin in 2018.
It is not relevant in the World Cup.
Warholm won his first World Cup gold in London five years ago. He defended it in Doha in 2019, the year after he won European Championship gold in the 400 meter hurdles at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin.
Karsten Warholm’s world record is 45, 94 seconds, which was famously set during the Olympic final in Japan nine months ago. He will now have to “answer” for that time in connection with all competition races.
Coach Leif Olav Alnes is certainly no stranger to Warholm being able to lower the time further. However, he believes that it would immediately be natural to believe that Warholm will evenly be able to achieve times of “stable” 46 seconds.
From ha erased Kevin Young’s 29-year-old world record (46.78) at Bislett on July 1 last year, Warholm did it with a time of 46.70 seconds.
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