Warholm breaks world 300m hurdles best in Xiamen

Three-time world champion Karsten Warholm opened his season in stunning style by breaking his own world best for 300m hurdles at the opening Wanda Diamond League meeting of 2025 in Xiamen on Saturday (26).

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Meanwhile, Olympic champions Faith Kipyegon, Mondo Duplantis, Beatrice Chebet and Valarie Allman also opened their Wanda Diamond League campaigns with impressive victories.

Warholm, who hadn’t raced since his victory in Silesia in late August last year, showed no signs of rust as he powered around three-quarters of the track, gliding over the barriers to win by almost a second in 33.05, an improvement of 0.21 on the world best he set in Oslo in 2021, the year he set the world 400m hurdles record.

Brazil’s Matheus Lima was second in 33.98 and Japan’s Ken Toyoda took third place in 34.22. It was recently announced by World Athletics that the 300m hurdles will become an official world record discipline in due course.

"I was a little bit surprised by how easy my legs were feeling off the last bend," said Warholm. "Of course you feel it a little bit in the end, but I managed to really push in the last 45 metres. This shows that the speed is there and the speed over the hurdles is there."

Warholm’s run was one of eight meeting records established in Xiamen.

Kipyegon also broke a meeting record and very nearly took down the world record.

The multiple global champion and world record-holder had been targeting Svetlana Masterkova’s long-standing world record of 2:28.98, having twice come close to breaking it back in 2020.