Tokyo: When brash Norwegian hurdler Karsten Warholm led the field to the starting line on a steamy afternoon at Olympic Stadium, he and his seven opponents had every reason to expect they’d be part of something special. It turned out to be more than that.
This gathering of the world’s best 400-metre hurdlers Tuesday produced a gold medal for Warholm, a world record, a masterpiece and slice of history. It also might have been one of the best races ever run.
“I never thought in my wildest imagination that this would be possible,” Warholm said after smashing his own world record in a time of 45.94 seconds.
In deciding where the race stands in the annals of Olympic history, there is a lot to consider:
The man who finished behind Warholm, Rai Benjamin, ran more than half a second faster than any other hurdler in history: 46.17. Had anyone dared tell him he would run that fast and finish second, Benjamin said, “I would probably beat you up and tell you to get out of my room.”
The third-place finisher, Alison dos Santos of Brazil, finished in 46.72, which would’ve been a world record five weeks earlier.
Armand Duplantis of Sweden won the Olympic gold medal in the pole vault. The 21-year-old Duplantis clinched victory at the Tokyo Games with a height of 6.02 meters and then raised the bar to 6.19 metres in a bid to break his own world record. Duplantis missed all three times when he tried to improve on the world record mark of 6.18 meters he set in Glasgow last year.
Elaine Thompson-Herah of Jamaica completed her second straight Olympic sprint sweep, finishing the 200 meters in 21.53 seconds, the second-fastest time in history. Thompson-Herah topped surprise second-place finisher Christine Mboma of Namibia by .48, while American Gabby Thomas took bronze.
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