Warholm shatters 300m hurdles world record at Impossible Games

Karsten Warholm ran the fastest 300m hurdles in history in a solo race in a largely empty stadium, clocking 33.78 seconds at the Impossible Games in Oslo on Thursday. Warholm, the two-time reigning world 400m hurdles champion, took seven tenths of a second off an 18-year-old record in a rarely contested event.

He did so at the closest thing resembling an international track and field meet in three months, since the coronavirus pandemic. The Impossible Games, a repurposed version of an annual Diamond League meet in Oslo, had few spectators (mostly cutouts, including renderings of Michael Jordan and Homer Simpson), limited events and small fields.

Another repurposed meet is due for July 9, featuring Allyson Felix and Noah Lyles racing from their training bases against athletes in different countries. The regular Diamond League calendar is scheduled to resume in August. In other events Thursday, a Norwegian team in Oslo beat a Kenyan team in Nairobi in a 2000m.

The Norwegians, led by brothers Filip, Henrik and Jakob Ingebrigtsen, easily prevailed. The Kenyans, with the last two 1500m world champions Timothy Cheruiyot and Elijah Manangoi, had to run in the rain. Mondo Duplantis, the pole vault world-record holder who flew from Louisiana to compete, beat former world-record holder Renaud Lavillenie, who previously taped his own attempts from his French home. Duplantis cleared 5.86 meters, four months after raising the overall world record to 6.17 and then 6.18 meters at indoor meets.