The 400 metres hurdles is a track and field hurdling event. The event has been on the Olympic athletics programme since 1900 for men and since 1984 for women.
The 400 metres, or 400-meter dash, is a sprint event in track and field competitions. It has been featured in the athletics programme at the Summer Olympics since 1896 for men and since 1964 for women. On a standard outdoor running track, it is one lap around the track. Runners start in staggered positions and race in separate lanes for the entire course. In many countries, athletes previously competed in the 440-yard dash (402.336 m)—which is a quarter of a mile and was referred to as the "quarter-mile"—instead of the 400 m (437.445 yards), though this distance is now obsolete.
Zuzana Hejnová is a retired Czech athlete who specialised in the 400 metres hurdles. She won the silver medal in the event at the 2012 London Olympics. Hejnová is a two-time World Champion, having claimed titles at the 2013 and 2015 World Championships in Athletics. She won bronze at the 2012 European Championships and silver for the 400 metres at the 2017 European Indoor Championships.
Eilidh Doyle is a retired British track and field athlete. Originally running as Eilidh Child, she specialised in the 400 metres hurdles outdoors, and the 400 metres flat indoors, as well as the 4 x 400 metres relay on both surfaces. She represented Great Britain at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, and won an Olympic bronze medal in the 4 x 400 metres relay at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro. Individually, she is the 2014 European Champion and a three-time Commonwealth silver medalist in the 400 metres hurdles.
Lauren Boden is an Australian athletics competitor. Her events are the 400 metre hurdles, 400 metres and long jump. She was the youngest woman to win the 400 metres hurdle event at the Australian national championships. She has competed in the long jump event and the 400 metres hurdle event at the World University Games. She has competed at the 2006 and 2010 Commonwealth Games and the 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympics in the 400 metre hurdles event.
Léa Sprunger is a former Swiss track and field athlete. Originally a heptathlete like her older sister Ellen, she began concentrating on the 200 metres and 400 metres in 2011, and then on the 400 metres hurdles from 2015. Her best times in the 400m and 400m hurdles of 50.52 s (2018) and 54.06 s (2019) are the Swiss records. She finished fifth in the 400m hurdles final at the 2017 World Championships, and went on to win the gold medal in the 400m hurdles at the 2018 European Championships.
Karsten Warholm is a Norwegian sprinter who competes in the 400 metres and 400 m hurdles. He is the 2020 Tokyo Olympic champion, a three-time world champion and the world record holder in the latter event.
Dalilah Muhammad is an American track and field athlete who specializes in the 400 meters hurdles. She is the 2016 Rio Olympics champion and 2020 Tokyo Olympics silver medalist, becoming at the latter the then-second-fastest woman of all time in the event with her personal best of 51.58 seconds. Muhammad was second at both the 2013 and 2017 World Championships to take her first gold in 2019, setting the former world record of 52.16 s. She was the second female 400 m hurdler in history, after Sally Gunnell, to have won the Olympic, World titles and broken the world record. At both the 2019 World Championships and Tokyo Games, she also took gold as part of women's 4 × 400 metres relay team.
Wenda Nel is a South African athlete specialising in the 400 metres hurdles. She competed at the 2011 World Championships reaching the semifinals.
Janieve Russell is a Jamaican track and field athlete who competes mainly in the 400 metres hurdles and the 400 metres sprint. She won an Olympic bronze medal in the 4 × 400 m relay in Tokyo 2021, where she also finished fourth in the 400m hurdles final in a personal best of 53.08 secs. She is a four-time Commonwealth Games gold medallist, winning the 400m hurdles title in 2018 and 2022, and the 4 × 400 m relay in 2014 and 2018. She has also won two relay silvers at the World Championships and a relay gold at the World Indoor Championships.
Kendra "Keni" Harrison is an American hurdler. Harrison held the world record in the women's 100 metres hurdles with a time of 12.20 seconds, set on July 22, 2016 at the London Müller Anniversary Games, breaking the previous world record of 12.21 seconds achieved nearly 28 years earlier by Bulgarian athlete Yordanka Donkova.
Shamier Little is an American track and field sprinter specializing in the 400 metres hurdles. As a 20-year-old college sophomore at Texas A&M University, Little was the 2015 US champion. She then went on to win the silver medal in her signature event at the 2015 and 2023 World Championships. In July 2021, she became the fifth fastest woman of all time at the event.
Nicholas Kiplagat Bett was a Kenyan track and field athlete who competed in the 400 metres hurdles. His personal best for the event is 47.79 seconds. He was a world champion in the event, having won in 2015, and a two-time bronze medallist at the African Championships in Athletics. He died in a road accident in Kenya at the age of 28.
Jaak-Heinrich Jagor is an Estonian hurdler. He competed in the 400 metres hurdles event at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing without qualifying for the final. His personal best in the 400 metres hurdles is 49.37 seconds set in Tallinn in 2015.
Mohamed Sghaier is a Tunisian hurdler. He competed in the 400 metres hurdles event at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing getting disqualified in the first round. His personal best in the 400 metres hurdles is 49.22 seconds set in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 2015. This is the current national record.
Aron Kipchumba Koech is a Kenyan hurdler. At the 2015 Athletics Kenya World Championship Trials he finished third in the 400 metres hurdles event. Later that year he represented Kenya in the 400 metres hurdles event at the 2015 World Championships in Athletics in Beijing, China. With a personal best, in a time of 49.38, he finished 22nd in the heats. He was qualified for the semi-finals where he finished 19th in a time of 49.54. Again in 2016 he finished third at the 2016 Athletics Kenya Olympic Trials behind his brother and Boniface Mucheru Tumuti. At the Olympics, Koech made the final while his brother was disqualified in the heats. Tumuti went on to capture the silver medal in National Record time, while Koech finished seventh. His 48.49 in the semi-final round is his personal record.
Abderrahman Almoubarrake Samba Alsaleck is a Qatari male track and field athlete who specialises in the 400 metres hurdles. He was born and grew up in Saudi Arabia but chose to represent Mauritania – his father's homeland – before eventually switching allegiance to Qatar and moving to Doha in 2015. He became eligible to compete for his adopted country in May 2016. He was the second person to run the 400m hurdle event in less than 47 seconds.
Anna Cockrell is an American track and field athlete competing in sprinting and hurdling. She is a two-time medalist at the 2019 Pan American Games in Lima, Peru and she represented the United States at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan.
Kenneth Selmon is an American track and field athlete who specializes in the 400 metres hurdles. He won the USA Outdoor Championship in 2018 and represented his country at the 2018 Athletics World Cup in London, where he won the 400 metres hurdles.
