By A Correspondent
Another World Athletics championships have arrived for the second successive year only because the calendar was badly upset in 2020 due to Covid-19 forcing the Olympic Games to be shifted to 2021 and the corresponding World championships to be rescheduled for 2022.
Though it could be taxing for the athletes, the fans cannot complain about the prospects of witnessing yet another World championships, especially in a year of high-voltage action, world records and razor-sharp contests.
Asia had 15 medals including five gold last time at Oregon, 36 countries competed from Asia and there were four Asian records set during the championships. The bulk of the Asian medals came from the racewalking events last time with the Japanese and the Chinese particularly strong on the road. This time, too, there could be expectations that the walkers would chip in handsomely for Asia.
Asia will have two outstanding athletes in the field, Chinese shot putter Gong Lijiao, who would be competing in her ninth straight World championships, and Qatari Mutaz Essa Barshim, who would be gunning for his fourth straight world title at the age of 32. Also going for her eighth World championships would be Chinese walker Liu Hong who has four World titles plus a silver through the years.
Barshim had won an emotional title amidst boisterous celebrations back home in the World championships in 2019 and he effortlessly added a third one last year at Oregon with a clearance of 2,37m. He is one centimetre less for the world lead this season.
The multi-talented American, JuVaughn Harrison at 2.35m is the next best to Barshim. Danil Lysenko of Russia, also at 2.35m, cannot figure in the Worlds because of the Russian ban.
Gong Lijiao made her World championships debut at the age of 18, finishing sixth with 18.66m at Osaka, Japan. That edition was the first of the four titles that the great New Zealander Valerie Adams, now retired, won on the trot. Gong Lijiao has two gold, two silver and three bronze medals from the Worlds. She skipped the Asian championships in June when team-mate Song Jianyuan won the gold with 18.88m.
Americans lead the charts
Americans Maggie Ewen (20.45m) and Chase Ealey (20.06m, tied second with Gong Lijiao for the season), lead the women’s shot put form charts, but they have both slumped after their 20-metre-plus performances. Ealey, who will be defending her title, in fact registered 18.62m at the US Nationals for the fourth place. Gong Lijiao should start the favourite under the circumstances.
Men’s shot put will miss a meaningful Asian presence since Asian record holder, Tajinder Pal Singh Toor (21.77m) has opted out of the Worlds to concentrate on his Asian Games preparations. He had also suffered an injury in recent times.
However, China and India are adequately represented in the men’s long jump. The long jump presents an intriguing picture with Olympic champion Miltiadis Tentoglou being the most consistent (season best 8.26m) as against the world-leading marks of the Indians, Jeswin Aldrin (8.42m) and Murali Sreeshankar (8.41m). Many international experts still have decided to opt for the Greek as the favourite with not many even prepared to mention the Indians.
Wang Jianan should be a factor in long jump
We should not rule out the reigning champion from China, though. Wang Jianan had stunned the world and Tentoglou last year with a last-round jump of 8.36m to clinch gold in only his second competition of the season. This season the Chinese is looking better than what he was last year though he has once again had only a limited number of competitions, two indoors and two out, with a best of 8.26m at the World championships trials back home in July. Wang incidentally is a world junior champion in 2014 and had a bronze in the World championships in 2015 apart from being Asian Games champion in 2018.
Jamaican Wayne Pinnock who has achieved 8.32m and 8.37m this season, Cuban Maykel Masso (SB 8.36m) and American Marquis Dendy (SB 8.34m) should be the other main contenders in the long jump contest. Will the Indians come up to expectations of their vast number of fans?
Men’s triple jump will have three Indians, Praveen Chithravel, Abdulla Aboobacker and Eldhose Paul, plus the experienced Chinese, Zhu Yaming, to provide the Asian challenge in a classy field in which Italian Andy Diaz, Jamaican Jaydon Hibbert and Burundi’s Hughes Zhango should be the main contenders following the last-minute withdrawal of Tokyo Olympic champion and defending champion Pedro Pablo Pichardo of Portugal.
The championships will miss Chinese Su Bingtian for the first time in seven editions. He was nursing an injury when reports last came in and he was quoted as saying he would better concentrate on his Paris Olympics preparations. Su Bingtian holds the Asian 100m record at 9.83s.
“Wherever you look, you’ve got some really outstanding performers and let’s just keep our fingers crossed that they maintain their form and their health through to Budapest and potentially some great head-to-head if you’re sitting there as a predictor of the Championships.”
The above observation by the World Athletics President, Sebastian Coe, who was re-elected for a third term on Aug 17, at his pre-Budapest video chat, sums up the exciting possibilities that the athletics fans are waiting for.
The Oregon records
The Oregon World Championships saw three world records, one by the incomparable American Sydney McLaughlin in the 400m hurdles, one by the habitual record man from Sweden pole-vaulter Armando Duplantis and the third by the Nigerian hurdler Tobi Amusan.
Amusan’s participation in the Budapest Worlds was in some doubt just days before the championships as she was provisionally suspended for a “whereabouts” violation by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), but she was eventually cleared for participation. McLaughlin, who was preparing to run the 400m this time, pulled out at the last moment citing a minor injury.
That leaves Duplantis from the Oregon batch of world-record setters. The 23-year-old Swede should start overwhelming favourite again for the gold just as he was last time and a year earlier to that, at the Tokyo Olympics. He obliged at both the championships.
Duplantis has inched up the world-record ladder in true Bubka style and looks set to set many more records in the years to come. Among his rivals, though not at that level, is Filipino John Obiena who joined the six-metre club this season and is the bronze medallist from the last edition.
The most outstanding athlete this season has been Faith Kipyegon. The 29-year-old Kenyan smashed the world record in the 1500m at Firenz, Italy, on June 2, with a timing of 1:49.11 and a week later shattered the world record in the 5000m with an effort of 14:05.20 in Paris. In July, she bettered the women’s mile world record running 4:07.64 in Monaco.
Kipyegon should be the favourite at Budapest in both the 1500m and the 5000m. She already has two Olympic and two world titles in the 1500m plus two World championships silvers in 2015 and 2019. Gudaf Tsegay of Ethiopia and Laura Muir of Britain would be among the challengers for Kipyegon. Of course, there would be the superb Dutchwoman Sifan Hassan who is entered for the 1500m, 5000m and 10,000m once again, though her speed this season is in some doubt among the fast finishers in middle distance.
Ryan Crouser is unchallenged
Talking of world records, the incomparable Ryan Crouser stretched his mark in shot put to 23.56m, leaving no one in doubt as to who is the overwhelming favourite for Budapest. Crouser, two-time Olympic champion, is the defending champion in the World championships. As usual his closest contestants are expected to be his American team-mate Joe Kovacs (second this season with 22.69m) who could manage only the fourth place in the US championships but got into the team since Crouser had a wild card entry, and New Zealander Tom Walsh (22.58m).
One of the fiercely contested events in these championships should be the men’s 3000m steeplechase. World No. 1 Soufiane El Bakkali has remained unbeaten in nine finals from September 2021 to July 2023. But he has a formidable rival in the Ethiopian, Lemecha Girma, at Budapest.
Their rivalry is not new, but Girma, by bettering the 19-year-old world record of Saif Saeed Shaheen of Qatar (formerly of Kenya) by clocking 7:52.11 in Paris on 9 June, has proclaimed himself as the biggest threat to the reign of the Moroccan.
The dice is, however, loaded against the Ethiopian. In eight meetings between 2019 and 2022, Girma has finished ahead of El Bakkali only once, at the Doha World championships in 2019 when he took the silver behind Kenyan Conselsus Kipruto and El Bakkali took the bronze.
Can Girma edge El Bakkali?
So far, El Bakkali has shown a command over the three races he has competed this season, looking comfortable while leading or hanging around the fourth or fifth place before the last two laps. How he would respond to Girma’s pace is to be seen and that may most probably affect the other placings as well.
Of Asian interest in the steeplechase would be the fate of India’s Avinash Sable (personal best 8:11.20, 2022) and Japan’s Ryuji Miura who set a national record of 8:09.91 while coming second to Girma in Paris in June. He was seventh at the Olympics at home in 2021.
There will be a clutch of Kenyans, as usual, to challenge the top two though Sable showed in Birmingham last year that the Kenyans were beatable in a major competition without much sweat. The Indian bagged the silver and behind him, among others, was Kipruto who seems to have faded away this season.
Indian interest and medal hopes will naturally centre around Neeraj Chopra. The 25-year-old javelin thrower has acquired a cloak of invincibility since winning the Olympic gold in Tokyo. Not that he has been winning everything before him, but coming second in the last World championships, then taking the Diamond League trophy and winning the two Diamond League meetings he competed in this season have shown that he is right up there in contention for the top spot.
Not for nothing has the Athletics Weekly, the popular British magazine, put him as the overwhelming favourite for the World title. That is the only crown missing from his impressive collection that includes, apart from the Olympic gold, the Asian Games and Commonwealth Games gold in 2018.
The AW has in fact gone a step ahead in predicting Chopra to breach the 90-metre mark in the final at Budapest, a benchmark he and his fans have been looking forward for him to reach the past few years. At second place is Grenada’s Anderson Peters, the world champion the past two editions, and at third, Czech Jakub Vadlejch, who leads the season lists with 89.51m. Vadlejch has competed in nine meets this season, and the No. 2, German Julian Weeber (88.72m) in ten meets.
The forecasts: Chopra 91.45, Peters 88.55, Vadlejch 88.12.
In women’s javelin, Olympic champion Li Shiying of China could finish only second in the Asian championships, and though entered in the Budapest meet, she might not be in the best of form to challenge the likes of defending champion Kelsey-Lee Barber of Australia and Japanese leader of the season lists, Haruka Kitaguchi (67.04m, NR). Kitaguchi, bronze medallist at Eugene last year, is in the form of her life. The off-form Annu Rani of India who made the finals of the last two World championships is not expected to make an impact this time.
Even as the world waits for the action to unfold with several match-ups leaving the fans in great anticipation, there is also the worry and disappointment of some doping occurrences and last-minute withdrawals of a few top athletes including American Michael Norman, who will not be defending his 400m title, Briton Ellish McColgan, the Commonwealth Games champion, Sydney McLaughlin, who was to try the 400m, Athing Mu, the 800m American specialist, and Surinam’s Issam Assinga, the 200m sensation, who is battling a doping rule violation charge, among others.
