Warholm Wins Fourth Straight European 400m Hurdles Title in Championship Record

Karsten Warholm won his fourth successive European 400m hurdles title in Birmingham on Friday 14 August, setting a championship record in the process. The Norwegian has now won the event at every European Championships since 2018, a streak no man had previously managed in this discipline. BBC Sport

His heat earlier in the week offered a hint of what was coming. Warholm cruised through heat three in 48.01 seconds, the fastest qualifying time across all three heats, with Slovenia's Matic Ian Guček close behind in 48.03. European Athletics The final, scheduled for Friday, was where he delivered the mark that mattered — a championship record that lowered his own previous standard of 47.12, set when he won his second European title at Munich 2022. World Athletics

The 400m hurdles — ten barriers spaced over a full lap of the track, demanding speed, rhythm and endurance in roughly equal measure — has become Warholm's personal fiefdom. He won his first European title at 22 in 2018, in only his second year in the event after switching from the decathlon (a ten-discipline contest spanning sprinting, jumping and throwing). That year he broke 48 seconds five times in twelve races. By Munich 2022, he had broken the championship record of 47.48 set by West Germany's Harald Schmid, running 47.12 to equal Schmid's haul of three titles. European Athletics In Rome two years later, he won a third. European Athletics

Now 30, Warholm says he is getting better, not slowing down. He told the BBC he feels he is "improving with experience and age," having "peaked at the right time." BBC Sport For an athlete whose world record of 46.70 — set at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics — already sits at the outer edge of what the event has produced, that is a striking claim from a man who has spent a decade redefining it.

He was not the only one making history on the Birmingham track. Nadia Battocletti of Italy defended her women's 10,000m title on the same evening, completing a distance double-double: the 5,000m and 10,000m crowns across two successive European Championships. European Athletics

Two athletes, two streaks extended, one memorable night of championship athletics. Birmingham 2026 may yet be remembered as the evening where two of Europe's finest showed exactly how far consistency and longevity can carry a career.