Alison Dos Santos ended Karsten Warholm’s reign as hurdles king at the world championships on Tuesday while Britain’s Jake Wightman won his country’s first 1500m gold in 39 years on a day of upsets.
Warholm may have been behind one of the most iconic moments in Olympic history when he smashed the 29-year-old world record to win the 400m hurdles at the Tokyo Games in a time of 45.94sec.
But the 26-year-old came to Eugene on the back of a hamstring injury which ultimately put paid to his medal attempt here.
Instead, Dos Santos ran the third fastest time of all time and a championship record of 46.29sec to win gold ahead of Americans Rai Benjamin and Trevor Bassitt.
“It’s pretty awesome to win the world title on this track. I didn’t care about the time because this is the first time I win a world title,” said Dos Santos.
Warholm led coming into the home straight but seized up badly and eventually came in seventh (48.42), breaking a winning streak of 22 races, in-cluding 18 finals, dating back to September 2018.
“It was a very tough race,” Warholm said. “I had an injury but to me it’s always your fight and giving your all and leaving it all on the track.
“I felt I did that. I hope looking back I’ll feel proud of that even though I prefer to take a medal.” Whilst everyone knew Warholm was coming back from injury, serious hopes were pinned on Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen in the men’s 1500m.—AFP
