Mariam Kareem, the 18-year-old Emirati who won 400m hurdles gold at the Asian Games, says the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics is now her main target. The Sharjah-based athlete clocked 54.31 seconds in Nagoya, Japan, last month, setting both an Asian Games record and an Asian under-20 record. It was the UAE’s first gold in the women’s 400m hurdles.
Her rise has been fast. The UAE Athletics Federation spotted her about three years ago, when she was barely 16, studying at a Dubai high school and running for a local club. She began in the 200m and 400m flat events before her coach moved her to the hurdles, judging that her height and flexibility suited the discipline. She had always enjoyed running but showed little interest in serious competition until a federation coach persuaded her to commit. She is the fifth of six children, and none of her siblings compete in sport.
The numbers from her 2026 season show the scale of the jump. She opened with 57.39 seconds at a Grand Prix meeting in Addis Ababa in April. At the World Athletics U20 Championships in Eugene, Oregon, in August, she ran 56.27 seconds and finished fourth, 0.28 seconds off a medal. In Nagoya she took nearly two more seconds off that time, and almost three seconds off her April season opener, even though she struggled with the time difference and was unwell during the Games. “I was tense, I was scared,” she said of the final.
The reaction back home surprised her. She was greeted at the airport on her return, and her sponsor, On, held an event to mark the win. Her mother backed her running from the start. Her father had doubts about the sport at first, she said, but he was the first person to call her after the race.
Kareem is now in her off-season and plans to return to training soon. Beyond Los Angeles, she wants to race at the World Championships and the Asian Championships, and hopes to compete across a full Diamond League season in 2027. Her idol is American Olympic champion Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, whom she hopes to face at the 2028 Games. She also said she wanted to keep representing the UAE on the biggest stages and to add to the country’s list of international medallists. “Consistency is the key,” she said of what the season has taught her.
