Sometimes, there comes an athlete so good that they come to embody the very sport they play. And when it comes to the 110m hurdles, few men have dominated the sport like this champion. With a 24-match undefeated streak, he wasn’t just winning—he was rewriting what dominance looked like. Not even winning the World Championships was enough to satiate him. So, soon came Olympics and with it came more chances to win. But come Tokyo 2021, things were far from what was expected. He lost the finals of the Tokyo Olympics. He vowed to come back stronger, but the very next year gave him PTSD. What happened?

“That season was tough,” said Grant in the recent episode of Ready Set Go. “Even like afterwards, uh, I was just talking about this with a group of friends earlier, you know, that loss happened. Um, does the indoor season run 729? Um, I was like, ‘All right, I’m back. I’m going, I’m getting going.’ But then that whole outdoor season, I was banged up. I was hurt.”

Before the Tokyo Olympics, Holloway ran an incredible 7.29 seconds on February 19, 2021, at the World Indoor Tour in Madrid. This time broke the previous 60m hurdles world record of 7.30 seconds set by Colin Jackson in 1994. But then the 2025 season opener came. In the podcast, the Olympian says, “I opened up my season and this is when Devon Allen ran 1284 on my head top in New York.”

He ran a blistering 12.84 seconds in the 110m hurdles at the 2022 USATF New York Grand Prix on June 12, 2022, at Icahn Stadium on Randall’s Island, New York City. This performance marked the third-fastest time in history, just 0.04 seconds behind the world record of 12.80 seconds held by Aries Merritt. Allen’s victory over reigning world champion Grant Holloway, who finished second in 13.06 seconds, left a lasting impact on the star.

He confessed, “Well, I ain’t been back to New York since I got PTSD going back to New York. I ain’t going back. I ain’t going back to New York. I ain’t going back to New York.” While New York may not have witnessed the peak of this man, other places did. Holloway had vowed to come back, and he did. The man set fire to the track in the very next season. The man came on so strong that he left a legacy.

And the foundation was laid by, in his very own words, “one Oregon and then, um, the pivotal moment in my career, which I will always say was that 2022 diamond league.” 

Grant Holloway’s comeback races

In the 2021 Olympics final, Parchment was quiet. Lurking. Surging. Over the last few moments of the race, especially when Grant had started to lose momentum after the 10th hurdle, the Jamaican closed the gap like a shadow. In a heartbeat, the lead vanished. Holloway crossed second. 13.09. Stunned. Silver. He vowed to come back 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,” he said. Holloway entered 2022 not as Olympic champion—that title had slipped away in Tokyo—but as the reigning world champion from Doha 2019. After a silver in Tokyo, questions loomed. Was his dominance fading?

He answered quickly. At the 2022 World Championships in Eugene, with the home crowd behind him, Holloway reclaimed gold in 13.03 seconds. It wasn’t his fastest, but it was enough. He defended his world title, becoming the first American since Allen Johnson to win back-to-back world 110m hurdles crowns. In the 2022 Diamond League season, Grant Holloway ran two key 110m hurdles races.

His first came at the Herculis meet in Monaco, where he clocked a swift 13.01 seconds—one of his season’s best. His second and final Diamond League race of the year was the Zurich Final. Facing a stacked field, including Rasheed Broadbell and Hansle Parchment, Holloway delivered when it counted. He won in 13.02 seconds, securing his first-ever Diamond League title. The man had redeemed the 2021 season.