World record holders Mondo Duplantis and Karsten Warholm to race in 100m sprint
After close to a year of speculation, two of the biggest names in track and field athletics have confirmed they will go head-to-head in competition.
Norwegian 400m hurdler Karsten Warholm and newly crowned double Olympic pole vault champion Armand Mondo Duplantis will line up against each other in a 100m sprint in Zurich, Switzerland.
The two stars will face off at Letzigrund Stadium on Wednesday 4 September – a day before the Diamond League meeting in Zurich.
At the Olympic Games in Paris 2024, Duplantis broke his own world record for the ninth time, clearing 6.25m as he clinched his second pole vault Olympic gold.
Three-time world 400m hurdles champion Warholm added a silver medal in Paris to the Olympic gold he earned at Tokyo 2020 in 2021, where he set a world record time of 45.94 seconds that still stands.
It's a rare sprint outing for both men, but not their first. Warholm's last documented men's 100m was in 2017, where he timed 10.49 seconds. That's just milliseconds faster than Duplatis’ personal best time. The pole vaulter posted 10.57 in his final year at a high school in the USA, where he grew up, in 2018.
Duplantis has previously expressed a desire to compete in sprint relays for Sweden in addition to pole vaulting.
"I would have loved to do that. And I would love to be part of breaking the Swedish record," he told Sweden's Dagens Nyheter, while also confirming that he managed to keep up with the pace when a training partner ran 10.30 recently.
Karsten Warhom and Mondo Duplantis will face off at Letzigrund Stadium on Wednesday 4 September.