Kariem Hussein

Kariem Hussein is one of the most successful athletes in recent years. The multiple Swiss champion had the whole country in raptures in 2014, when he won the European Championship title over 400 metres hurdles in Zurich’s venerable Letzigrund Stadium. In the same year, he was elected ‚Newcomer of the Year‘ at the Swiss Sports Awards.

As a young boy, he dreamt of a footballing career at Manchester United. His considerable talent on the track didn’t come to the fore until he was 20 years old. Since the individual sport of athletics was a better fit with his ambition to study medicine, he decided to switch from the football field to the running track ¬– with resounding success, as we know today. Hussein claimed another bronze medal at European Championships, has taken part in two Olympics and won his discipline at the 2015 Diamond League meeting in Zurich and the 2017 Athletissima meeting in Lausanne.

Stay realistic and believe in the impossible!

And Kariem Hussein continues to aim high: in 2020, he aims to be the first Swiss athlete since Franz Meier (1980 in Moscow) to qualify for the Olympic finals over 400 metres hurdles in Tokyo.

But this athlete is by no means alone on his journey to the top. As a world-class sportsman, Kariem Hussein has discovered just how crucial a perfectly-tuned environment is to success. And for this reason, he doesn’t describe himself as a ‚lone warrior‘, preferring to refer to those surrounding him as ‚Team Hussein‘.

Let this model athlete take you on a journey into the world of top-class sports.

He will demonstrate what it takes to be successful, while also asking himself where stumbling blocks might lie and what mechanisms can be tweaked in order to achieve even greater success. He then gives his audience an intriguing glimpse into his inner world. What goes through the mind of a person who is standing in the starting blocks in front of 25,000 spectators, in the knowledge that what comes next is make or break? In this single moment, the athlete is entirely on his own again – adrift in a stormy sea of pressure, confidence, nervousness, a sense of strength and maybe even self-doubt. And at the push of a button (or in this case the firing of the starter’s gun) he has to transform his entire energy into a perfect run. 10 hurdles, 400 metres, 1 chance!