Four superstar athletes took time out of their preparations for Saturday’s Wanda Diamond League meeting in Xiamen to visit a local university on Wednesday, hosting a training session with young athletes and passing on lessons to help them reach the top.
Karsten Warholm, Masai Russell, Cordell Tinch and Mattia Furlani have all become global champions in their respective events and they shared their wisdom with young, aspiring stars at the Xiamen University track.
Warholm, the reigning Diamond League champion in the 400m hurdles, was joined by his coach Leif Olav Alnes and after a short warm-up, he led the youngsters through various sprint drills. He was later asked how he learns from his failures.
Photo credit: Cathal Dennehy for WDL Xiamen
“If you do it long enough, failures will eventually find you,” he told the group. “How to solve it depends on how you choose to attack it. Failures can break you or you can turn the tables. I find motivation and rage. I take that with me and take it into the work.
“What we do here on the training facility is where the results are created,” he added. “It’s created Monday to Sunday when no one is really watching. And that’s how you confront failure – by working hard and doing the right things.”
Photo credit: Cathal Dennehy for WDL Xiamen
Tinch, the reigning Diamond League and world 110m hurdles champion, led the students through hurdle trills and later gave them feedback on their jumping technique. He stressed to them the role self-belief had played in helping him reach the top of the world in Tokyo last year.
“It honestly started here last year,” he said. “This was where I got my first professional win, first Diamond League win. Beating a very talented fields and being able to carry it through the rest of the Diamond League season, it gave me a lot of faith because a lot of people around me told me I had all the tools to be a great hurdler, but I didn’t believe it yet myself.”
Photo credit: Cathal Dennehy for WDL Xiamen
Russell, the reigning Olympic 100m hurdles champion who started the Diamond League season with a blazing 12.25-second win in Shanghai/Keqiao last weekend, also taught the youngsters how to improve their technique before passing on an important lesson about adversity.
“Leading up to 2024, I had the toughest season of my life,” she said. “I wasn’t running fast and had no idea that becoming an Olympic champion was in the near future.
Photo credit: Cathal Dennehy for WDL Xiamen
“But I stayed true to myself, stayed disciplined, stayed focused on the things that mattered. When I got to Paris I had one goal: winning three rounds. And I did just that. I just had to believe in myself, believe in my work and do the things that I had dreamed of.”
Furlani also started the season with a bang last weekend, setting a personal best of 8.43m to win the men’s long jump in Shanghai/Keqiao. The reigning world champion showed the young athletes in Xiamen various drills to improve their jumping ability and in a discussion with the students later, he reminded them of the value of persistence.
Photo credit: Cathal Dennehy for WDL Xiamen
“Every day I’m working, with the perfect people around me, with good dedication and believing I could do this [personal best],” he said. “It’s important to believe in yourself and search for your dreams.”
Warholm spoke to assembled media before departing the track to continue his own preparations for Saturday’s meeting, where he’ll square off again with Brazilian rival Alison dos Santos. He was asked what advice he’d give to youngsters who wish to reach the top of the sport and he turned to the students to deliver it.
Photo credit: Cathal Dennehy for WDL Xiamen
“The best advice first must be to fall in love with the training,” he said. “Because what we do here, what we do every day, is what is going to make us better.
“That means also that we need to have a little bit of fun, we need to like what we are doing and be eager to learn. I think the advice is just to be at the track, fall in love with the sport and listen to your coaches, then everything will be alright.”