The king of the 400m hurdles will run at the Golden Gala Pietro Mennea. The presence of Karsten Warholm at the Olympic Stadium in Rome on 17 September in the Italian leg of the Wanda Diamond League is official. The outstanding 24-year-old Norwegian star is going through an extrahordinary period of form and every time he steps on the track, he can threaten the world record in the 400m hurdles, where he holds the second fastest time in history with the European record of 46.87 set in Stockolm last August. He missed Kevin Young’s 46.78 world record set in the Olympic final in Barcelona 1992 by nine hundredths of a second. The “viking”, one of the stand-out stars in world athletics, will arrive in Rome after showing again his impressive form in Berlin with 47.08 last week. The 400m hurdles race will start at 19.03 on Thursday. The Golden Gala meeting record set by Abderrahman Samba in 2018 with 47.48 is obviously under threat. Warholm won two consecutive world titles in London 2017 and and Doha 2019 and the European gold medal in Berlin 2018 and has remained unbeaten in the past two years. He is re-writing the history of 400m hurdles very quickly and is the only hurdler in the world to boast two times under 47 seconds. The 400m hurdles is rounded out by French specialists Happio and Vaillant, Estonian Magi and Italian specialist Mario Lambrughi. Warholm is one of the greatest attractions of a meeting, which also features other Scandinavian stars like Armand Duplantis from Sweden, the world record holder in the pole vault (6.18m), and European 1500m record holder Jakob Ingebrigtsen, who will face Yeman Crippa in the 3000 metres. The other eagerly awaited Italian top names are Filippo Tortu and Marcell Jacobs in the 100 metres, Gianmarco Tamberi in the high jump, Leonardo Fabbri in the shot put and Luminosa Bogliolo in the 100m hurdles.
14 September, 2020
