Max Burgin has thrown down the gauntlet to his rivals and warned: catch me if you can.
The fastest man over 800 metres in the world this year opens his World Championships in the heats on Wednesday in Eugene.
His time of one minute 43.52 seconds is yet to be beaten in 2022 and the 20-year-old is ready to perform ahead of his first major senior championships.
Taking an amount of confidence from being the fastest in the field is very useful— Max Burgin
He said: “Going into the championships as the world lead gives you amazing confidence. You know that you are faster than anyone going in. No one else has shown that they can run as fast as me yet.
“As you go through the season, you naturally get fitter and have more to give. The British Championships was the best I’ve been for a long time as it came out quite fast. So there’s definitely more to come.
“Going into those championships, I was hoping to run at least another 1:43 from the front. But obviously the conditions threw a bit of a spanner in that works but I knew I was in that sort of shape.
“I knew I’d be able to run that time. We were thinking it would have been a faster time had the conditions been different but as it happened, it wasn’t too bad.”
Burgin, though, is keen to insist he is not getting carried away with his form and admires his competitors, including Canada’s Marco Arop and Kenya’s Wycliffe Kisasy.
“I think being arrogant about it is not going to get you anywhere, and it will probably blow up in your face because if you don’t show respect to your peers or your opponents, you just set yourself up to fail,” he said.
“But yeah, taking an amount of confidence from being the fastest in the field is very useful.”
Burgin is joined in the heats by British team-mates Kyle Langford, who finished fourth at London 2017, and Daniel Rowden.
