Alison dos Santos Breaks the 400m Hurdles World Record, With Its Previous Holder in the Same Race
45.80 seconds in Zurich, and Karsten Warholm — the man whose record just fell — finished second in the same race.
By Miles Ashworth · 27 Aug 2026 · 4 min read · Canada edition
Alison dos Santos at the Bislett Games, 2024. Photo: Ssu, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).Brazil's Alison dos Santos ran 45.80 seconds in the men's 400m hurdles at Weltklasse Zürich on Thursday 27 August, breaking a world record that had stood since the Tokyo Olympics. The mark he took down was Karsten Warholm's 45.94, set in the 2021 Olympic final. Dos Santos lowered it by fourteen hundredths of a second.
What made it more than just a fast time was who was next to him. Warholm was in the race, drawn immediately outside dos Santos, who ran from lane six. Dos Santos had made up the stagger on him by halfway and pulled clear over the closing hurdles. Warholm finished second in 46.69 and watched his own record fall from a few metres away.
Dos Santos was open about what that meant. "To break a record no matter how is amazing, but to do it with Karsten was different, because we're cool," he said. "He led the way, showed that 45 was possible. I was there when he ran 45 and he was here when I ran 45."
The night in Tokyo he never wanted to repeat
That last line goes back to the 2021 Olympic final, one of the greatest races the sport has seen. Warholm won in 45.94 and Rai Benjamin took silver in 46.17. Dos Santos finished third in 46.72, a time faster than Kevin Young's 1992 world record, and still only good enough for bronze.
He has said that result stayed with him. "I was like, I never want to experience that again, break a world record and not be the first one." In Zurich he got the record and the win on the same night.
A career that has not been straightforward
Dos Santos was born in June 2000 in São Joaquim da Barra, in São Paulo state. At ten months old he suffered severe third-degree burns when a pan of hot oil tipped over him, and he spent four months in hospital. He still carries the scars. He has described athletics, which he took up in 2013, as the thing that helped him grow out of the shyness that followed.
After the Tokyo bronze he won the 2022 world title in Eugene in 46.29. Then came setbacks. In February 2023 he had surgery on a torn meniscus in his right knee, and the recovery took much of that season. He came back to win bronze again at the Paris Olympics in 2024 and silver at the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo in 46.84. He was consistently in the medals. Zurich gave him the one thing none of those races had: the world record.
Three men who rewrote the event
For almost three decades the 400m hurdles barely moved. American Kevin Young ran 46.78 to win the 1992 Olympic title in Barcelona, and that stood as the world record until 2021. Then three athletes arrived at the same time. Warholm broke Young's mark with 46.70 in Oslo that July and lowered it again to 45.94 in the Tokyo final, where Benjamin ran 46.17 and dos Santos 46.72.
Those three have pushed each other ever since, and each of them has now run times that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Dos Santos's 45.80 is the latest step, and he has said since that the three of them are still far from the limit of the event.
Why the record moves so rarely
The 400m hurdles is one of athletics' most punishing events. It needs close to full sprint speed held over a whole lap, while clearing ten barriers without breaking stride pattern. A small mistake at one hurdle, such as a stutter step or a trailing leg that clips the barrier, costs more time than most athletes can win back. It is part of why the record went 29 years without moving, and why the man whose record just fell being in the race, and graciously so, meant something.
A two-record night
Dos Santos's record was only the first of the evening. Less than 40 minutes later, American Masai Russell ran 12.09 in the women's 100m hurdles to break Tobi Amusan's world record. Zurich got two hurdles world records on the same night.
