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Two-time outdoor and one-time indoor world champion of the 110m hurdles, Grant Holloway will return to the Gyulai István Memorial on 8 August.

Grant Holloway’s special relationship with the Memorial began in 2019, when he competed for the first time in his life here abroad. It was already clear then that the sprinter, who showed his huge talent with a 13.16 seconds run to the audience in Székesfehérvár, has a special charisma.

He flew over the hurdles with such a beautiful technique that only a few people can match. It is no coincidence that he became the favourite of many on that July evening. Shortly afterwards, he won the most prestigious success of his career to date, winning the gold medal at the Doha World Championships in late September/early October 2019.

Holloway is capable of launching off the start with the kind of speed you almost only see from Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce. This ability makes him by far the best of the world in the 60m hurdles. Not just of our age, but perhaps of all time. It’s pretty awesome that he is still unbeaten indoors in his entire career! That’s how he became world indoor record holder in Madrid last year.

With a dizzying 7.29 seconds, he carved one hundredth of a second off the record set by Britain’s Colin Jackson in 1994. He matched that time in the semi-finals of the World Indoor Championships in Belgrade in March this year and went on to win the World Champion title in the final. All this six months after a huge disappointment like losing the final of the Tokyo Olympics.

“I just think the nerves, the big atmosphere, got the best of me a little bit,” he said. “But I’m young, I’ve got a lot of races under my belt, so I’ll take this with a grain of salt and I keep moving forward.” “This was not the outcome that I wanted but it enables me to say I’m an Olympic medallist,” said Holloway following the last few metres at the Olympics, which only made him stronger.

“I love the hurdles and I can’t wait until next year for the World Championships in front of a home crowd (Eugene, Oregon). I think that’s going to be really good for me,” the still 24-year-old world star was optimistic.

The aforementioned World Championships gold and world record setting in Belgrade showed that Holloway had quickly got over being robbed of the gold medal at the Olympics by Hansle Parchment. However, at the beginning of the outdoor season it looked like he would get a fearsome challenger for the Oregon World Championships.

In mid-June at the Continental Tour Gold in New York City, Devon Allen, who was just four hundredths off the world record of 12.80 in the 110m hurdles, gave Holloway a very big beating. The clash between the rival, who is preparing for the NFL, and Holloway at Hayward Field was eventually cancelled after Allen was disqualified for jumping out of the start by a single thousandth of a second in the final.

Holloway was thus left without a real rival, but the example of Tokyo showed that despite a one-and-a-half-year unbeaten streak, it is not easy to turn a chance into a gold medal. But this time he managed it, running 13.03 to defend the World Champion title he had won in Doha.

Allen, drafted this year by the Philadelphia Eagles, and Holloway have American football in common, but our hero chose athletics because he had a dream of becoming an Olympic athlete. Moreover, the University of Florida, where he studied, didn’t expect him to play with an egg-shaped ball even though, like Allen, he could have been an excellent receiver.

The nickname “Flamingo” was not given to him because of the pink shorts Adidas gave him, but was inspired by a prank he played with his opponent Omar McLeod back in 2019. While he named his Jamaican friend Mr. Silk after a musician who looked a lot like him, McLeod started calling Holloway a flamingo.

After 2019 and 2021, the Flamingo will be aiming for his third victory at the Memorial on 8 August, and he has a very good chance of achieving it.