"The best race in Olympic history": Karsten Warholm smashes world record in 400-meter hurdles
03 August 2021
Three men, three countries and 46 seconds. That's all it took Tuesday morning in Tokyo for the men's 400-meter hurdles final to set the Olympics ablaze.
What happened: Norway's Karsten Warholm, just one month removed from breaking a 29-year-old world record, rewrote history with one of the most jaw-dropping races in human history.
- Warholm won gold with a mind-boggling time of 45.94 seconds, obliterating his month-old record (46.70). He ran faster than 18 of the 48 men who raced in the regular 400-meter dash (!!!).
- American Rai Benjamin won silver, with his 46.17 besting the previous world record by more than half a second.
- Brazil's Alison dos Santos won bronze and ran the fourth-fastest time ever recorded (46.72).
- Watch the race.
What they're saying: "That was the best race in Olympic history. I don't even think Usain Bolt's 9.5 topped that," said Benjamin.
Photo: Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images
The big picture: The men's 100-meter final has been a marquee event for nearly a century; its champions some of the Games' biggest stars.
- None of those stars shined brighter than Bolt, and in his first absence since 2004 — despite a phenomenal race by Italy's Lamont Marcell Jacobs — the 100 lacked its typical electricity and buzz.
- That left the door open for another event to fill the void, and the 400-meter hurdles delivered. Warholm is 25, Benjamin is 24 and Dos Santos is 21. Will they run it back in Paris?
Coming up: Tonight's women's 400-meter hurdles (10:30pm ET) features some serious American firepower.
- Dalilah Muhammad, 31, is the reigning Olympic champion. In 2019, she broke a 16-year-old world record; two months later, she broke it again.
- Sydney McLaughlin, 21, broke Muhammad's record in June at trials, overtaking the veteran down the final straightaway.
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.