The 400m hurdles Olympian ran a big season’s best of 48.61sec. at the early-season Goldenes Oval event in Dresden despite knocking down barriers seven and eight, the latter of which disrupted his stride heavily.
Chalmers went marginally faster once last summer, running 48.54, but that was an especially adrenaline-fuelled, clutch effort to achieve the Olympic standard at the UK Athletics Championships.
Guernsey Athletics development officer Tom Druce is not playing down the impact the big collision had in his latest outing.
‘I’m pretty sure that cost him half a second,’ he said.
‘He will have it in his head, based on that run, he is in shape to do very low 48.
‘I’m very excited, to be fair. Clearly, he’s in amazing shape and it’s a step up from last year.
‘He did not get close to that 48.5 last year before or after. To have got so close with that huge impact he had with hurdle eight [is very impressive].’
As the Guernsey ace sights the Tokyo 2025 World Championships standard of 48.50, with a longer-term vision to challenge Kriss Akabusi’s British record of 47.82, the athletics development officer has highlighted the 400m hurdles’ current status quo.
In August 2021, Karsten Warholm had re-defined the event’s boundaries in a mind-blowing Olympic final, running a still-standing world record of 45.94. Even Rai Benjamin’s 46.17 for silver would have been a massive leap on the existing mark.
But these times have remained largely unchallenged and Chalmers is now making a name for himself among the world’s elite, being currently 24th on World Athletics rankings for the discipline.
‘We have not seen the top guys pushing those times – the event is settling down again,’ Druce said.
‘If he can go forward while the event is still, we might find him doing incredible things at world level.’
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