Hurdles
An intimidating figure on the track, a Lego lover off it: discover some surprising facts about 400m hurdle world record holder Karsten Warholm.
Karsten Warholm loves Harry Potter Lego, setting up viral social media shoots with his coach and running fast – very fast. The Norwegian track and field athlete is taking his sport to new levels.
Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, Warholm ran through the finishing line of the 400m hurdles in Tokyo with his arms outstretched, not quite believing the manner in which he had shattered the world record.
In 2024, Warholm became a two-time winner of the Paris Games, taking home a silver medal.
Already the Norwegian had broken the world record earlier in the summer; this time he shattered it. But there is much more to one of the global stars of athletics helping to fill the void left by Usain Bolt, as we found out…
01
His first sporting passion was football
Growing up, it was football that first captured the imagination of a sporty young Warholm, playing as a No9 for his local team. But as he put it: “I was a goal-getter, I used my speed and that’s everything that I had. I never got very far.”
He quickly found out he was a better runner, so attention quickly turned to the track where he preferred the multi-sport format of the decathlon.
02
His hurdling technique was dreadful when he began
Despite winning the Under-18 World Championships in the decathlon, his coach saw something that made him think his athletic skills might be better suited to the 400m hurdles. But it was a far from glorious start.
Warholm recalled: “One of my first training camps doing the 400m hurdles I crashed really badly into one of the hurdles and it was a brutal start.” But soon the rhythm came. Having started doing it in 2015, he made the Olympics in 2016 and was world champion a year later.
03
He and his coach have become viral sensations
Both his coach, Leif Olav Alnes, and he clearly take their sport very seriously but the pair are not afraid to have some fun on the side, as Warholm’s Instagram feed will attest to. The pair have posed for all manner of quirky pictures, which have exploded on social.
Of getting his coach to agree to them, he said: “I usually come up with most of the ideas. Leif doesn’t like to give his personal information away, so I’m very surprised I can convince him to do some of the things we do. Deep inside, he finds it very funny.
04
His event is known as the man killer
“In our sport, they call it the man killer and there’s good reasons why,” he says of his event, which is renowned for the horrible lactic acid build-up as athletes stagger through the final metres of a given race.
He adds: “It’s a nasty feeling, you should try it once, but you learn to work with that as well. I love how the rhythm works the first eight hurdles and the last 100m is all about getting home. It’s a tough one but it’s also what I love about it.”
05
When not breaking world records, he likes to build Lego models
How do you prepare to go faster in your event than any man has travelled before? In the case of the 28-year-old, he does it by taking his mind off things by building Lego, including more recently a recreation of Hogwarts.
“I’ve worked with Lego a lot,” he explains. “It’s recreational, it’s after practice, a way to relax. I did it a lot as a kid, but there was a long period it seemed stupid, as grown-ups don’t do that. But then you realise you should do what you like to do. Lego is my way of doing something I like to do and it’s very nostalgic.”
I’ve worked with Lego a lot. It’s recreational, it’s after practice, a way to relax
06
His dream is to jump over a car one day… maybe Max Verstappen’s
In his sport, he is no stranger to pushing the boundaries but, off the track, he wants to do that too. His singular passion at some stage is to hurdle a car… if it’s safe.
“I’ve always dreamt about hurdling over a car,” he admits, “but it needs to be the last thing I do as I need to not injure myself. That would be like a dream project, but I’m not sure if I have the balls to go through with it.” As for the suggestion of hurdling Max Verstappen’s Red Bull Racing car, he says: “That would be awesome. But it’s going to be tough and high risk.”
07
For a man who runs so fast, he’s incredibly lazy… and late
Warholm, by his own admission, has two bad habits – that he’s lazy and that he’s late, neither of which seem plausible for an athlete at the peak of their powers.
“I’m always running late, that is probably my worst habit,” he says. “It’s like in my head a car ride that takes 10 minutes, I’ll always think I can do it in five and it’s not a good way to behave. That’s just me being positive about time. I’m also incredibly lazy. I can train for eight hours and be fully focused, but afterwards I’m lazy. I can wait for days before doing the dishes!”