The memory of the final of the 400-meter hurdles world championship is impressive.

Olympic champion Karsten Warholm powerfully storms out of the finish line.

It looks like he will take the lead in his usual fashion and win his third straight title - but at that moment his strength is failing him.

Michael Reinsch

Correspondent for sports in Berlin.

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“It was horrible,” the Norwegian recalls: “I took it fast because I knew it was going to be a fast race.

But with all my difficulties, with the injury I had, it just wasn't enough.

The tank was empty.

I didn't have anything for the last hundred meters."

With a time of 46.29 seconds, the Brazilian Alison dos Santos became world champion.

Warholm, the first and only athlete to run the 400-meter hurdles in under 46 seconds in his Tokyo 2021 Olympic victory in 45.94 seconds, trotted to the finish two seconds later.

That same night he booked his return flight for the next morning.

He was fed up with the World Cup.

"No problem with self-confidence"

Now he is at the European Championships in Munich, and all the athletics world awaits his victory.

"I know why I didn't run a low 46 in Eugene," says the 26-year-old Norwegian. "I wasn't fully prepared.

I'm not someone who says I'm going to win.

I'm not even saying that here because that's what it's all about: the race.

That's what we're here for, and that's what makes it so exciting.

The only thing I can promise is that I will try to fight."

A thigh muscle strain, followed by a sacroiliac infection, threw Warholm off track at the start of the Diamond League in Rabat, Morocco.

He couldn't train properly for six weeks.

During that time he was close to hell, he complained.

Instead of flying to America for the World Cup, he could have stayed at home.

But because he had at least recovered from the injury, he turned himself in – without having contested a single competition.

“I would have liked to have had a few races for confidence.

But I don't really have a problem with self-confidence," he said before the competition.

Looking back on the defeat, he joked in Munich before the final this Friday (10 p.m. on ARD): “When the Titanic sank, the onboard orchestra played 'Closer to God'.

I did that too.” But of course such a defeat is not really a catastrophe – “even if it feels like it”.

"Just focus on me"

Eugene's break-in wasn't the first of high-flyer Karsten Warholm.

At the European Championships in Berlin in 2018, he tried the double on the stadium circuit.

He won the title over the hurdles.

After all, he made it to the final over the 400 meters flat - and almost two seconds behind the Briton Matthew Hudson-Smith, who also became European Champion in Munich, the goal.

"Don't remind me," he replied when asked if he believed Dutch Femke Bol could do the double over 400 meters flat and 400 meters hurdles.

She presented on Wednesday evening with the first title win, the second should follow this Friday.

Perhaps there was some good in Eugene's defeat, Warholm speculates.

"It makes you get to know each other better," he says. "The fact that I think about it so much shows me how much my sport means to me." That's no surprise.

The man from the town of Ulsteinvik on Norway's west coast, who passes for an authentic Viking with his fighting spirit and irrepressible cheer, hates to lose.

An almost fanatical supporter of all kinds of sports, who spends hours at home in front of the television set, isolates himself at the European Championships in Munich of all places.

"I saw a bit of swimming in Rome at home," he says, "but here I am in my little bubble and just concentrating on myself.

It's like that even at the Olympics, although I love the Olympics.”

Warholm promises that he will do everything he can to change the result of the World Cup next year - and with his emphasis on the World Cup he puts the importance of this European Championship into perspective a little.

"The Star of My Life"

Where does he get his confidence from?

"I have a lot of natural confidence," Warholm replies. "It's because I'm striving to be the star of my life.

Just like everyone should try to be the star of their own lives.”

What does he mean?

Hard to believe: the athlete who makes no secret of his exuberant ambition does not want to make himself dependent on results.

Or so he says.

And admits: "It's getting harder and harder.

I meet a lot of people just because I'm the 400m hurdler.

Not because they think I'm a nice guy."

That would be a mistake, at least for other runners.

As his race will probably show, Warholm goes onto the track again with the aggressiveness of a Viking.

Being nice is not a category for this fighter, at least on the track.