Online Reporter
NOAH LYLES and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone lead the US medal charge at the World Athletics Championships that gets underway on Saturday in Tokyo, Japan, while Armand Duplantis is expected to cement his legacy as the greatest pole vaulter in history.
They will be followed by some of the sport’s biggest names – Faith Kipyegon, Karsten Warholm and Femke Bol among them – as they seek to etch their names into the history books over nine days of action. This world championships, for which all female athletes will have undergone a mandatory gene test, will close a season that has featured 15 thrilling Diamond League meets and Michael Johnson’s fledgling Grand Slam Track series.
Grand Slam was launched in the hope of bringing the top track performers together, but it floundered and the fourth of the four-meet series was cancelled due to financial difficulties.
Olympic 100m champions Lyles and Julien Alfred opted out of the series, instead focusing on the Diamond League, and both notched up morale-boosting victories at the circuit’s finals in Zurich this month.
Lyles said he would head to Tokyo “with a lot of energy (and) I will use that to my advantage”, after outstripping Botswana’s Olympic 200m champion Letsile Tebogo over the longer sprint.
But Kishane Thompson of Jamaica, who lost to Lyles by just five thousandths of a second at the Paris Olympics, is the fastest man this year at 100m having clocked 9.75sec. Tebogo and Alfred will be seeking to repeat their feats in Paris when both claimed golds in firsts for Botswana and Saint Lucia. – AFP Sport.
