That was just before the final hurdle and the crazy 30m to the finish of the 400m hurdles at the Tokyo Olympics. He saw his opponent, Ray Benjamin, suddenly close in on his left shoulder. Exhausted and out of oxygen, he began to see stars. And then, in an instant, Benjamin was gone and Warholm was crossing the finish line to win the gold medal for Norway, a rarity for a country far better known for winter sports, salmon and oil wealth. Both Warholm and Benjamin broke the previous world record that day, making their rematch Tuesday night a must-see event at this week’s World Athletics Championships at Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore. Warholm shook off concerns about a recent hamstring tear and burst into the finals alongside Benjamin on Sunday when both won their semi-final matches. Together, they give the 400-meter hurdles a stature it hasn’t had since Edwin Moses won 122 consecutive races in the 1980s. For all his stardom, however, Moses did not have a single career rival like the 26-year-old Warholm in Benjamin, who is 24. Warholm and Benjamin also finished one-two, and in the same order, at the last world championship. While they’re friendly off the track, theirs is now a duel as intense as the Viking roar Warholm lets out as he pounds his upper chest, just below his shoulders, before charging into the blocks to start each race. It’s a competition the sport desperately needs. “He trains in the US. I train in Norway. It’s Nike. I’m Puma,” Warholm said in a recent interview from his home in Oslo. “He is fighting for his first gold medal. I’m trying to defend my territory.” Now, for that roar and chest-beating. Warholm said the ritual began in training in Oslo. Because the country is so small (about 5.4 million people) and piste is something of an afterthought, far behind Nordic skiing, it never had any competition. His coach and a couple of female billionaires are the extent of his daily training company. That meant he had to find a way to juice his adrenaline before a workout. He tried the roaring and chest pounding one day and loved it. He used to hit himself a little lower on his torso. Then a coach informed him that pounding his heart just before a quarter-mile sprint was a terrible idea. He listened and lifted the contact point but continued to pound. The sound of his fist hitting his flesh can echo in the lower bowl of a stadium. “There’s a lot of power that goes into it,” Warholm said. However, roars and chest-beating may not be enough to get Warholm over his latest hurdle. In June, in his first 400-meter hurdles race of the season, Warholm succumbed to a hamstring injury after the first hurdle. Since then, he and his trainer, Leif Alnes, have thought about nothing but trying to be healthy for the world championship rematch with Benjamin. When Warholm took part in this match in Rabat, Morocco, Alnes was relieved that his prized pupil did not crumple to the ground, which often happens with a severe femur fracture. That said, the 400m hurdles is basically a sprint, and in a sprint, 99 percent healthy isn’t enough. If Warholm is not 100%, he will not run. “I always say, if you don’t have time to do it the right way right now, when are you going to have time,” Alnes said in a recent interview. “We must be wise. This is not a decision that can be based on emotion.” Both Karsten Warholm of Norway and Rai Benjamin of the United States broke the world record in the 400m hurdles at the Tokyo Olympics. Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times Warholm was involved in soccer and winter sports as a child growing up near the west coast of Norway in the fjords, but became a track and field star in his middle years and never looked back. He was originally a decathlete. His two best events were the 400m and 110m hurdles. Alnes, a longtime coach at the Norwegian athletics federation, told him that combining the two events would be the fastest path to the Olympics. He was right. Warholm qualified in the 400 meters hurdles for the 2016 Rio Olympics, where he failed to make the final, but posted the 10th fastest time in the semifinals. The following year, in London, he won his first world championship at the age of just 21. Track and field experts said it was a fluke, since Warholm won with the slowest time to win a world championship. No one calls him crazy now. Moses said Warholm’s life and training schedule in Norway, away from distractions and his competition, probably helps. “Rivals advance your knowledge and training,” Moses said in an interview. “I knew what a good runner Harald Schmidt was and that by the time I got up in California, he had done a full day’s work and finished in West Germany.” Warholm met Moses years ago, at a circuit in Oslo, and Moses has long been an influence on Warholm’s career. Moses, who has a degree in physics and is considered the Albert Einstein of the 400m hurdles, was among the first competitors in the event to take just 13 steps between hurdles. Previously, 14 was the standard. Now almost everyone uses a 13, including Warholm, though at just 6-foot-2, he’s several inches shorter than many of his top competitors, making it more difficult. Heading into Tokyo, the showdown with Benjamin felt special. Benjamin had come within five-hundredths of a second of the world record at the U.S. Olympic Trials in late June. The mark remained for almost 29 years. Warholm then broke it in July by eight centimeters. Both assumed that winning the gold medal would require them to break it again. Warholm likes to start quickly, stretching the space between himself and the runner to his left while closing the space between the runner and the runner to his right. Tokyo was no exception. At a distance of 100 meters he had passed Alison dos Santos, the Brazilian champion. For a moment, Warholm thought he might have started too fast. But there was no turning back. As he approached the final turn, he saw Benjamin closing in on his left shoulder. It was all going down to the last hurdle. Warholm had a clean pass when he needed it most. Benjamin missed his mark ever so slightly. “I saw him and then I didn’t see him anymore,” he said. He pushed his arms and ran for the finish. He looked up at the board, saw his time and grabbed his head. In high-tech spikes on one of the fastest tracks ever built, he ran 45.94, three-quarters of a second faster than his previous record, but just a quarter of a second ahead of Benjamin. It was a rare running gold medal for Norway and the country’s first since 1996, with perhaps more to come now that the world is seeing what is possible. “It’s like a rock thrown into water and the waves go very far if it’s big enough,” Alnes said. Four days later, fellow Norwegian Jakob Ingebrigtsen won gold in the 1,500m, turning the two men into icons in their country at the level of its skiers. Warholm spends his free time building elaborate Lego models. He has one of the Colosseum in Rome and another of Hogwarts, from Harry Potter and London Bridge. It’s a release, he said, something to do besides running and staring at a screen. He also likes to build model sports cars. He has built a Lamborghini model, a Bugatti and a McLaren. He drives a Porsche Taycan, an electric sports car. When he’s having a bad day, he pulls out his phone and looks for a video of his race from last year’s Olympics. He has done this at least 15 times. It always works. “Forever, this will be my most important fight,” he said. “I will never again have the chance to win my first Olympic gold medal.”
