Karsten Warholm: An unfathomable run that repositioned the limits of human potential

Midway through a 17-day stretch of watching the world’s best athletes in 33 sports, this was an event that existed on an entirely different plane: an outlier among outliers – a race, a performance, an athlete, that will be spoken about a century from now

Karsten Warholm, of Norway, reacts after winning the men's 400m hurdles final. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

There had never been an Olympic final quite like this. In truth, there had never been a race quite like this, over any distance, not at any point in the history of this sport. Here was a performance, two performances, plucked from the realm of the extraterrestrial.

In 45.94 frenetic seconds at the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo this morning, the limits of human potential were not so much repositioned as sent hurtling out and away into the stratosphere, Norway’s Karsten Warholm doing something unfathomable, something unimaginable: blasting one lap of the track and clearing 10 barriers in under 46 seconds.