British 400m hurdling on the rise in 2025

Alastair Chalmers’ superlative run this past weekend was yet more evidence of Great Britain’s athletes excelling over the distance

Cast your mind back to last year’s UK Athletics Championships and the moment when Alastair Chalmers attempted to qualify for the Paris Olympics.

To guarantee selection for the Games, the British hurdler needed to run faster than the automatic qualification mark of 48.70, given he narrowly missed out with 48.76 at the European Championships.

However, things quickly unravelled in Manchester after Chalmers left his blocks before the starting gun. As was his right, the Guernsey athlete ran under protest and, with the mindset of proving all the doubters wrong, he stormed round the track in a championships record of 48.53. Crucially, it was also under the time needed to qualify for the Olympics.

Would the result stand though? Chalmers had claimed that the reason for such a quick reaction was because he heard noise in the crowd. Almost two hours after he finished the race, officials upheld his appeal and agreed with his argument.

Chalmers, with his very last opportunity, had qualified for the Games, later stating that it went from being “the worst day” of his life to “the best”.

With the automatic qualification standard for this year’s World Athletics Championships in Tokyo being 48.50 instead of 48.70, you might’ve thought that athletes would find it tougher to meet that mark. But, in the last few weeks, a myriad of Great Britain’s male British hurdlers have upped their game and taken things to the next level.

Chalmers has once again led the way. This past weekend, the 25-year-old recorded a personal best of 48.30 – following times of 49.13 and 48.61 this season – to win from lane two in Rehlingen, Germany. That means that the Guernsey athlete has, in early June, almost certainly booked his spot on the plane to the Japanese capital.

Not far behind Chalmers on the 2025 lists is Seamus Derbyshire, who decimated his personal best of 49.29 with 48.47 – also under the automatic world qualification mark – at the Josef Odlozil Memorial around a fortnight ago.

Then, at last month’s IFAM Outdoor Meet in Brussels, Josh Faulds, Jake Minshull, Alex Knibbs and Tyri Donovan all ran under 50 seconds, the former two going sub-49 over the distance.

Faulds won a highly competitive race in damp conditions, recording a time of 48.59 in the Belgian capital – a mark that is under…