Karsten Warholm: – I’m not going to lie

An Olympic gold, two World Cup golds, two European Championship golds, and a world record 11th make Karsten Warholm the best 400m hurdles athlete of all time, but the 27-year-old is in no way satisfied with that reason.

Warholm told Dagbladet that he had trained better than ever before the upcoming outdoor season. It’s a big warning to competitors – med Leading the way is Alison Dos Santos and Ray Benjamin – who took advantage of sunmoring injury woes last year and snapped Warholm’s winning streak during WC in Eugene.

The saying goes: “When the cat goes, the mice dance on the table.”

But now the cat is back.

Or perhaps the most appropriate: the Lion from Olstenvik.

The hamstring injury, which bedeviled large parts of last season, is 100% healed, Warholm told Dagbladet and closed out today’s class. The gold of the European Championship in the 400-meter hurdles in Munich in August and the gold of the European Championship indoors in the 400-meter flat in Istanbul in March are proof of that:

The best of all time, Karsten Warholm, is back on top.

– The injury is completely over, confirms the athletics star from Ulsteinwijk.

– an eye opener

You have a complete resume and have won everything you can in your sport. What motivates you now?

– I remember you talked about the same thing almost a year ago. Then I scored pretty big goals, but then I managed to injure my hamstring before the season started. It’s been such a great eye-opener for me in terms of how happy I really am in what I do and how much I appreciate being able to stretch my knits every day, and also seeing how far I can actually go, says Warholm.

continued:

– I wouldn’t have kept up with this, and I don’t think Lev Olaf Alness would have bothered me either, if we didn’t think there was more. But it gets more and more difficult each time to improve. it’s the truth. But we’re working as passionately as ever and this year I’m really looking forward to having an injury-free season where I’ll have fun and hopefully run at breakneck speed. I am very happy with where I am now.

Train better than ever

Are you indicating that you have trained better than ever?

– I feel it. I will not lie. I feel like I’ve never been ‘total’, whether in training, performance or the full package, as I am now, Warholm tells Dagbladet.

He adds:

– But at the same time: I’m getting old. After all, I’m a soon to be 27-year veteran athlete, so I have to do the job. I am fully aged. Now it’s about putting together a well-functioning program, stretching the flexibility as much as possible, and lightening the load so you don’t suffer the injuries that often ruin athletes’ lives.

– Is it going according to plan?

– I feel like we’re doing really well with that, and I’m very happy to have Lev with me as a coach, who I think is probably the leading athletics coach in the world, who can control this with an iron fist.

– The best coach in the world

Warholm can’t brag enough about Coach Lev Olav Allnes, who he refers to several times in the interview as the best athletics coach in the world.

– Lev is very good at managing loads, one way or another. And of course it is important to me to have Amalie Yoell and Elizabeth Sletum as teammates, which also motivates me every day. Everything is as it should be, in the frame it should be, so it’s just up to me to present myself and keep injury free of course.

– What did you do against this season if it was a little better than before?

– I feel like there are sick smaller things. Continuity is better than ever. There are no small things that bother me, and I also feel that the body still responds well to the amount of training.

– He turned his life around

The amounts of training are enormous. Dagbladet had previously been able to watch The Beast sessions, which at the time ran from 10 am to 6 pm

– Our main thing is to stay on massive amounts of training. We’ve also found ways to reduce it even further, with clever stuff, because you have to save some space. We can’t be content with jogging and heavy weights all the time. You should do some exercises that are also relatively specific, but don’t get in the way or cause you injury, Warholm says.

– I feel the scale is very good now. I also feel like I’ve rearranged my life and structure so that I can do whatever I want, without something getting stuck in my wheels, says the world record holder.

– What do you mean you changed your life?

– It was a very long process. When I got pierced in 2017, I was 21 years old. I had just moved in on my own in Oslo and started training with Leif, so I obviously came up with some habits. But I feel like I’ve gotten rid of those habits.

– What does it mean?

– It’s about living like a 24-hour athlete and doing everything I can to use all my time to improve my performance, Olympic champion and world record holder Karsten Warholm tells Dagbladet.

Norway fascinates: the world reacts