If you want to supplement your Paralympics viewing schedule with even more track action, then the good news is that another showdown between two world-leading athletes is on the cards – only, it’s not quite what you’d expect.
Tonight [Wednesday 4 September], inside the Letzigrund Stadium in Zurich, Switzerland, Swedish pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis and Norwegian 400m hurdler Karsten Warholm will drop their disciplines and race each other over an explosive 100m sprint.
While Warholm has the endurance to power over hurdles for a full lap of the track, and Duplantis deploys an impressive sprint before he launches himself over bars exceeding six metres, never before have they faced each other over this distance.
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Two-time Olympic champion Duplantis is, quite literally, head and shoulders above his competitors, having broken the pole vault world record an astonishing 10 times. The 24-year-old field eventer set a seismic new world record of 6.25m at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris this summer, before breaking it again less than three weeks later at the Silesia Diamond League in Poland. He raised the bar, in every way, to 6.26m.
‘Nerves is maybe not the perfect word, but I’m feeling it,’ laughed Duplantis ahead of the 100m spectacle. ‘The juices are flowing. I’m less confident in this than I am pole vaulting, but I did the 100m a few times back when I was in high school.
‘There’s no better feeling to that split second right before that gun goes off and you’re just there waiting for it, and everything releases when it happens,’ he continued. ‘It’s like the biggest bundle of energy you could possibly have – it’s hard to explain.’
Warholm, too, holds a world record of his own in the 400m hurdles. An Olympic gold and silver medallist and three-time world champion in the event, the 28-year-old certainly has the edge when it comes to track running experience.
‘I think it’s going to be a real matchup,’ said Warholm on the long-awaited race. ‘I’m going to give him [Duplantis] everything that I’ve got, and I know that he will do the same. That’s why we’re here to find out – that’s what the excitement is all about. Who will cross the finish line first?
‘It’s like when you’re play fighting with your buddies growing up – it always gets serious at one point,’ he said, smiling. ‘That’s how it’s going to be. Right now, it’s all fun and games, but when we’re at that line, it’s not going to be that much fun anymore. We’re in for a dog fight.’
Held the day before the Weltklasse Zurich Diamond League meeting and hosted in collaboration between Puma, Red Bull and Weltklasse Zurich, the race will mark the culmination of a playful back-and-forth between the athletes that first started to simmer in July 2023, when they ignited the idea of racing one another to determine who – poles and hurdles aside – can really run the fastest. A fun but fiery concept that has stirred fans with excitement, it is now to become a reality as Duplantis and Warholm go head-to-head over arguably the most legendary sprint distance of them all.
When it comes to sprinting, both athletes are speedier and more similar in ability than you might think. Warholm clocked an impressive 10.49 seconds in the 100m back in 2017, while Duplantis recorded 10.57 seconds for the same distance as a high school student just one year later. Fast-forward to 2024 and both athletes have scored multiple medals and records in their chosen – and very different – track and field disciplines. As such, the result of tonight’s scintillating 100m encounter could go either way – and will offer spectators some fantastic, fast-paced scenes.
