Brazil’s Alison dos Santos, the 2022 world champion in the 400m hurdles and the 2021 Olympic bronze medalist, will compete in his first hurdle race of the year when he goes up against Olympic champion and world record holder Karsten Warholm at the Monaco Diamond League.

What you need to know:

– Dos Santos, who is the third-fastest man in the history of the event, underwent knee surgery in February. Whether he would recover in time to defend his gold medal was uncertain.

– He opened up his season with a 44.73 for the flat 400m at the Silesia Diamond League, which was just shy of his 44.54 personal best from April 2022.

What he said at the Monaco Diamond League Press Conference:

“I got injured doing a plank. It was completely weird at the moment. We did not know what was going. Me and my coach – after the day that I got injured – we had a talk. We were just seeing if it was possible to come back to the track, do a nice race, and a really good season. We were smart and said, ‘I’m young. I can not rush stuff right now. Of course, the Olympic Games is our main goal. We want to be great next year. We don’t want to forget this year.’

So we were just working hard and how I was getting better, watching my shape. We know that we are in good shape right now to go back to the track tomorrow and run a great time and just be competitive with the guys.

We need to be ready. We don’t have time to lose. The guys are really running fast. We need to improve yourselves and do our best. I’m glad that I’m healthy right now and that I can say to you tomorrow is going to be a great race.”

What’s next:

Warholm and Dos Santos will race on Friday, July 21. You can watch the Monaco Diamond League on Peacock starting at 2 p.m. Warholm is 5-1 against Dos Santos in his career. His only loss came in last year’s world championship final.