It happens from time to time: performances stagnate and, all of a sudden, everything changes, with records falling one after another. This is the year of the hurdles, with three world records already, and the season is still under way, with two major competitions to come.
But let us start at the beginning, with the one record that was not set this year: the women's 400 m hurdles record. The current world record, held by Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, stands at 50.37 s, set at the Paris 2024 Olympics. To illustrate the point about stagnation, let us go back to the pre-Muhammad and McLaughlin era. The previous world record belonged to Yuliya Pechonkina, who ran 52.34 s at the 2003 Russian Championships. (Pechonkina won the 2005 World Championships in a time under 53 seconds, but had finished eighth at the 2004 Athens Olympics, where her semi-final time would have guaranteed her the silver medal). And then, for 16 years, nothing happened. At the 2019 US trials, Dalilah Muhammad broke the record with 52.20 s and improved it further at the World Championships, with 52.16 s. On both occasions, Sydney McLaughlin was not far behind. The positions were going to change when competitions resumed after the pandemic. McLaughlin first shocked the world with 51.90 s at the US trials, then improved the record again in the Tokyo Olympic final, running 51.41 s, with Muhammad just behind in 51.58 s. It was the best 400 m hurdles race I have ever watched. Three more world records followed, culminating in the current 50.37 s mark. (McLaughlin-Levrone took a year off from the hurdles and went on to challenge Marita Koch's 400 m flat record with 47.78 s. She then took another year away from competition to give birth to her daughter). Just to put things in perspective, Y. Lituyev broke Hardin's men's world record with 50.4 s in 1953. Muhammad continues to compete and remains among the best in the world, in a discipline temporarily deprived of McLaughlin-Levrone and Femke Bol (Bol has moved towards the 800 m, a distance in which Muhammad ran 2:03.71 this year).
The men's 400 m hurdles also experienced a period of stagnation. Edwin Moses reigned practically unchallenged for more than ten years, taking the world record from John Akii-Bua's 47.82 s to 47.02 s in 1983. Then came Kevin Young's stunning 46.78 s at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, followed by almost 30 years of silence. The first hurdler to go under 47 seconds again was Abderrahman Samba, who ran 46.98 s at the Meeting de Paris in 2018. Plagued by injuries, Samba never managed to threaten Young's record (although he was a world bronze medallist in 2019 and again in 2025). That honour was reserved for an ex-decathlete who had converted to the low hurdles, Karsten Warholm. He had run under 47 seconds in both 2019 and 2020, but reached the summit in 2021, first running 46.70 s at the Bislett Games and then producing the astonishing 45.94 s at the Tokyo Olympics. (After all, the first official sub-46 performance in the flat 400 m came only in 1955; the best times of the 1950s were still above 46 seconds). Over the last years I have been following Alison dos Santos, who, like all athletes, had his ups and downs because of injuries, but had established himself among the leading figures in the event. Following his victory at the 2022 World Championships, I wrote:
"Dos Santos has progressed to a level at which I will not be astonished if, barring injury, he goes for Warholm's record. What he is technically doing, passing the first three hurdles in 12 strides, has never been attempted before, with most hurdlers struggling with the 13-stride rhythm".
Dos Santos can sustain the 12-stride rhythm because he is at ease with both legs over the hurdles, something Warholm has never mastered. And he can finish the race in 13 strides, while almost everybody else has to switch to 15. So the fact that he ran a 45.80 s world record in Zürich is not such a big surprise.
The other world record set in Zürich was in the women's 100 m hurdles. Going back in history, we find that Yordanka Donkova's 12.21 s record stood for almost 30 years, until Kendra Harrison ran 12.20 s in 2016. (It is remarkable to see a world-record holder achieve so little success when it comes to honours at major competitions. Harrison has just one world title, in the 60 m hurdles at the 2018 World Indoor Championships, one Olympic silver medal, from 2021, and one world silver medal, from 2019). Tobi Amusan broke Harrison's record with 12.12 s in the semi-finals of the 2022 World Championships, followed by a wind-assisted 12.06 s in the final. But this year belonged to Masai Russell. She had announced her intentions last year, when she ran 12.17 s during the Grand Slam Track competitions. (That may have been too early in the season, which could explain why she was not in top shape at the World Championships). In Zürich she ran a flawless 100 m hurdles in 12.09 s, beating Amusan, who could manage only 12.23 s.
The men's high-hurdles record was also improved in 2026. Renaldo 'Skeets' Nehemiah was the first man under 13 seconds, with 12.93 s. Unfortunately, he turned to professional football (the American version) and when he returned to athletics it was too late. Pat Connolly, who coached him, believed that if he had concentrated on athletics he could have broken the 400 m hurdles record as well. In any case, the world record progressed thanks to several great champions, like Roger Kingdom, Colin Jackson, Xiang Liu and Dayron Robles, and had been in the possession of Aries Merritt since 2012, with 12.80 s. People expected Grant Holloway to break it, but he was sidelined by injuries, and the record survived for a few more seasons. The spotlight then moved to C. Tinch, the 2025 world champion, but that was not to be. Finally, it was the 2024 world under-20 champion, Ja'Kobe Tharp, who erased the long-standing record, running 12.75 s in the semi-finals of the NCAA Championships in June. Given that Tharp is only 21, one can hope that this will not be the last record set by this talented athlete. (To achieve that, he will need to become more consistent and avoid blunders such as the one at the Lausanne meeting.)
The two world records were the icing on the cake of the superb Zürich Diamond League. (I enjoyed the meeting in the company of my friend P. Motis at his 'Cacti House' estate on the island of Kythira, where I was spending a week enjoying his hospitality).
The meeting was truly exceptional. Imagine two pole vaulters, Duplantis and Karalis, still competing at a world-record height and finally settling for the highest one-two finish in history: 6.25 m and 6.20 m. There was a women's 800 m in which A. Werro dispelled any doubts I may have had after the Europeans by winning in 1:53.70, the third-best performance of all time, followed by F. Bol in 1:54.71, which places her ninth on the all-time list.
And what about the men's long jump, in which just 2 cm separated two world champions, M. Tentoglou and T. Gayle, with 8.45 m and 8.43 m? It was a contest that barely missed my quality criterion, 'eight jumpers over 8 m', since only seven athletes cleared eight metres. J. Alfred edged M. Jefferson-Wooden in the 100 m, but only just: 10.693 to 10.698.
A. Cockrell ran a world-leading 52.13 s in the 400 m hurdles, just ahead of D. Muhammad, while F. Diallo once again broke the Portuguese record, following her bronze medal at the Europeans, with 53.30 s. N. Olyslagers cleared 2.02 m, I. Gerashchenko 2.00 m and M. Vuković 1.98 m, relegating Mahuchikh to fourth place in the women's high jump. H. Moll cleared a personal best of 4.90 m in the pole vault. R. Pathirage won the javelin with a throw of more than 92 m. E. Wanyonyi ran a world-leading 1:41.76 in the 800 m, while K. Bednarek did the same in the 200 m, with 19.62 s. F. Cherotich won the women's 3000 m steeple with 8:55.82 just ahead of D. Lemngole 8:55.94 and P. Chemutai 8:58.28.
It was a great competition, and I am telling myself that I should not set my expectations too high for the Brussels DL final. As for the famous Ultimate Championship, the one with the curtailed, arbitrarily fixed programme, my expectations are definitely lower. (I would, however, be glad to be proved wrong).
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