Grant Holloway's journey to Paris 2024 gold and the Olympic title he was missing: “This is my time now”
Olympic champion was the only crown missing from the hurdler’s resume. But a blistering run in Paris saw him take his place on the top step of the podium.
One of the many highlights of the Paris 2024 athletics competition was watching the winning athletes ring a large bell that sat at the side of the Stade de France track.
After storming to victory in the men’s 110m hurdles, Grant Holloway struck the bell five times to signify the five world championship gold medals - three outdoor and two indoor - he has won in a career in which he has become used to being the best.
Since his first world outdoor gold at Doha 2019, Holloway has dominated his sport in a way few others could dream of.
But for all the triumphs that have made him such an imperious athlete, there was one glaring omission from his resume: Olympic gold.
That blot on his near-perfect copybook was erased in dramatic fashion in Paris as he claimed the title of Olympic champion with a spectacular run on Thursday 8 August.
And after years of hard work, commitment, and sacrifice, this shining gold meant the world to him.
“To have this gold medal around my neck, this is everything I want, you know?” Holloway said in an exclusive interview with Olympics.com at the adidas House Paris.
“This is everything for the last three years I’ve been working towards and, using the world championships and the Diamond League to get me ready for this moment is fundamental to my success.”
Even the best can get better in their pursuit of perfection
It’s easy to think that an athlete like Holloway - the second-fastest ever in the 110m hurdles - might rest on his laurels.
However, the 26-year-old is in constant pursuit of perfection as he aims to continue his winning streak at major championships that stretches back to 2022, with his last big defeat at the Tokyo 2020 Games in 2021, where he was shocked in the final by Hansle Parchment and made to settle for silver.
“I’m older, wiser. and more mature, you know?” He said, reflecting on how much he’s grown since that race in Japan’s capital. “Just going forward with that, I’m looking forward to just continuing to pay out my legacy.
‘The biggest thing is you’re only as good as your next race and the last five or six majors I have done have been nothing but gold. So I just want to continue to stay on top and obviously, I know it’s never going to be easy. With the amount of great talent we have here in the 110 hurdles, I’ve just got to be able to stay on my A-game.”
Even for someone with such a stellar history in track & field, Holloway continues to analyse what he perceives to be his weaknesses and is not afraid to adapt his regime to make himself the best athlete possible.
“From Tokyo [Olympics], I had to look myself in the mirror and say, ‘Where did you falter this year?’ And the weight room was a big area where I felt like I could have been way stronger and way better, so I made some changes in there.”
However, it wasn’t just the physical side of things that Holloway made changes, it was also on the mental side of his preparations.
“I used to not travel with therapists, now everywhere I go I have three good therapists that travel with me and I have one of them at every meeting,” he said, before later adding: “The biggest thing when you get to major championships, you got to get there healthy and you got to get there happy, and everything else is going to take care of itself.”
What goals remain for an athlete who has won everything?
Holloway’s Olympic triumph saw him finally win the last gold medal missing from his glittering collection.
However, there is one more item on his athletic bucket list that would see him crowned the undisputed greatest 110m hurdler of all time: the 110m world record.
“Just the right race, the right time,” he replied when asked what it would take for him to break the world record his compatriot Aries Merritt set back in 2012. “And a little bit of luck on your side on the day [of the race].”
Holloway’s best time of 12.81 is just 0.01 seconds away from Merritt’s fastest-ever performance but, while that marginal improvement is something he is looking forward to achieving, it’s not the be-all-and-end-all for an athlete who now stands on top of the world.
“When it lines up, it’s good,” he said of the world record. “But if I can continue to run sub-13 [second] performances, even if I don’t get the world record, everybody knows I was the most consistent hurdler in my era. And that’s the main thing…
“I pay homage to Aries Merritt and all the other great hurdlers before. You’ve got Allen Johnson, one of the best hurdlers of all time, in my opinion.
“But, you know, it’s my time now.”