Karsten Warholm exclusive: What made me a better athlete and helped me win 2023 world title
The Norwegian world record holder regained his 400m hurdles world title on the athletics track in Budapest after losing it in an injury-hit 2022 season. He tells Olympics.com about how the last year has made him better.
Karsten Warholm makes no secret of it: 2022 was a difficult year.
Barely six weeks before the track and field World Athletics Championships in July, Warholm tore his hamstring at a Diamond League meet in Monaco, setting off a chain of events that saw his grip on the men's 400m hurdles world title ended after five years.
But now, newly (re)crowned the world champion in that event following his triumph at the 2023 World Championships in Budapest, Warholm can look back on 2022 with some degree of appreciation.
"It was a wakeup call for me that has also made me a better athlete," the Norwegian tells Olympics.com the day after his victory in the Hungarian capital.
"I'm very proud that we were able to make it back and be an even better version of ourselves."
Warholm had dominated the event since in the years since his first world title, won in London in 2017. He also won in Doha in 2019 and broke the 46-second barrier with his 45.94 world record en route to gold at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in 2021.
But the setback in 2022, which resulted in an unfit Warholm finishing seventh at the Oregon22 World Championships, changed Warholm's outlook on how he was approaching races.
"I had many years where everything went my way," he says. "I won everything. In your subconsciousness something starts to happen even though you're trying to fight it: it tells you that winning is the habit all the time.
"But to be able to be at the top of the world, you need to do everything as close to perfect as possible. And I wasn't able to do that in 2022, and then I was number seven in the world.
"It's a tough position to maintain and I learned that and I think it made me an even better athlete."
Karsten Warholm on dealing with critics: "It's like Teflon, you wash it off quite easily"
After his win in Budapest, Warholm referenced having to overcome doubters who did not believe in his ability to return from his difficult 2022 season.
"I think a lot of athletes feel pressured to speak highly of themselves and I don't always think it matches how they really feel inside," he says of how athletes deal with questioning from external sources.
"I think it's about real confidence," Warholm adds when asked how he himself shuts off outside noise. "There's a very good saying, a lion doesn't concern himself with the opinion of a sheep.
"I feel like I can do my own reflections whether I think the critique I get is right or wrong and if it's right, I try to adjust. If it's wrong, I let it go – it's like Teflon, you wash it off quite easily. That's how my brain works when it comes to critiques. Teflon brain."
Unlike many top athletes, however, Warholm does not use sports psychologists.
"My coach is also my mental trainer. I think I've never wanted to go and see a psychologist – nothing wrong with those who do.
"For me, I always think that at the beginning of every issue there's a very easy solution, but over time it can be a big issue. If you solve your problems early enough, they can't grow that big.
"Communication, having someone to talk to like I have with my coach, that's all I need."
How to beat Karsten Warholm?
Warholm's 2023 world title again makes him favourite to successfully defend his Olympic title, won in Tokyo, next year in Paris.
But he knows his rivals are already on his tail in terms of preparation. Kyron McMaster of the British Virgin Islands and the USA's Rai Benjamin took the other medals behind Warholm in Budapest, while Olympic bronze medallist and 2022 world champ Alison dos Santos is himself returning from a serious injury.
"With this gold medal, the more gold medals I get, the more pissed off and motivated my competitors become," Norway's Warholm tells us. "Every time I win a gold medal, I can see it in their eyes.
"They really want to beat me now and, and I know that. That's why I'm always going to go and train very hard.
"And I'm not saying I'm going to win in Paris. But whoever is going to beat me needs to run very fast."