Olympic champion Keely Hodgkinson is in good form going into the World Athletics Championships
The world’s best athletes will take to the track and field this weekend when the World Athletics Championships get under way in Tokyo from September 13-21.
Many of the stars who shone at Paris 2024 will be there, including Britain’s 800m Olympic champion Keely Hodgkinson and USA’s 100m Olympic champion Noah Lyles.
One of the major talking points away from the sport has been the introduction of a mandatory SRY or sex test for athletes who intend to compete in female categories.
All athletes in female category take new ‘sex test’
World Athletics, led by their President Seb Coe, have taken an unambiguous stance for several years when it comes to talking about and defining new rules around the sensitive issues of the protection of female categories, transgender and DSD (Difference of Sexual Development).
They became the first global sporting federation to announce they would introduce a mandatory, once-in-a-lifetime gene test, known as an SRY Test earlier this year.
The test identifies the Y chromosome which causes male characteristics to develop. If an athlete returns a negative result, they are eligible to compete in female categories at world ranking events, including these World Championships.
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World Athletics President Lord Coe says the governing body will do ‘whatever is necessary’ to protect the female category in the sport after it approved the introduction of cheek swabbing to determine if an athlete is biologically female
Coe told Sky Sports he expected every athlete required to take an SRY Test will have done so by the time track and field events get under way in Tokyo, including all French athletes.
In France, the process has been complicated by French law where the SRY gene test is illegal in France due to a 1994 law banning DNA testing for non-medical, non-judicial purposes to protect family integrity, so French athletes have had to undertake the SRY test by travelling outside of France.
Coe confirmed that while it is World Athletics’ stated aim to have all athletes tested by the start of the World Championships next month, the results do not have to be known due to the tight time frame.
For athletes whose national federation hasn’t been able to offer an SRY test yet, World Athletics will step in and offer the test at holding camps in Japan used by athletes prior to competing in Tokyo.
“By and large, the process has gone pretty smoothly, but it’s not been without its challenges,” Coe said. “The vast majority have been pretty straightforward and we’ve (World Athletics) made a contribution of about US$100 per test.”
How important are championships for Coe?
Very.
He has transformed the athletics governing body since his election in Beijing in 2015 from the tarnished old IAAF to the new World Athletics.
He’s serving his third and final term as president and while no doubt still pondering his defeat in March’s International Olympic Committee (IOC) presidency election to Kirsty Coventry, his first love has always been track and field, and during his term as president he has tackled controversial issues like banning Russia and bringing in updated rules on gender eligibility.
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Lord Coe accepts defeat to Kirsty Coventry in the IOC Presidential vote and says he welcomes the fact it’s a former Olympic athlete who will take up the role
While those issues can be divisive, the progress of time has shown that many, if not most, sporting federations have followed athletics’ lead by watching and then following.
It’s interesting to note that the new IOC President, whom he lost out to, is preparing the IOC to greater understand and perhaps even lead on gender eligibility and protections for female sports stars.
He also wants athletics firmly in the position of the world’s second most popular sport behind football by showing off packed out stadia in Tokyo.
The World Championships take place in the 70,000 capacity Olympic Stadium where during the 2020 Olympics not one fan was able to watch the sport on offer due to a strict Covid-19 lockdown in Japan.
Many of the sessions during the nine days of competition are sell-outs and, according to Coe, no session will have fewer than 50,000 people in attendance.
Tokyo heat, humidity and typhoons
World Athletics deliberately scheduled the start of their marquee championships later than they would normally. Two years ago in Budapest, for example, the schedule ran during August.
High temperatures and humidity can be exceedingly high in Japan during the months of July and August, as many athletes who competed at the Tokyo Olympics four years ago will testify to.
The 2025 World Athletics Championships will be held at the National Stadium in Tokyo from September 13-21
However, heat mitigation measures will again be in place as Japan has experienced temperatures 2.36 Degrees Celsius above average between June and August, with local temperatures in Tokyo this week reaching 33 Degrees Celsius.
World Athletics president Seb Coe is of the belief that climate change is not temporary and is here to stay; at these championships, decisions on whether competition will go ahead will not be in the hands of local organisers, but World Athletics.
Information on drinks, ice baths and cooling techniques has been shared widely with athletes and their federations, while plenty of provision will be in place for spectators.
Tokyo and Japan, in general, is prone to typhoons at this time of year, indeed many British and Northern Irish athletes were confined to their hotel at their training camp for a few days due to a typhoon. If such a weather system hits Tokyo during the championships, it will again be a decision for World Athletics to make as to whether to postpone or cancel events.
Where could GB medals come from?
Great Britain and Northern Ireland haven’t been set a medal target, but a top-eight finish in the medal table is the challenge, with an expectation of several of their world-leading track stars to medal and all relay squads to medal.
So who are the stars? The women’s 800m final has been scheduled for the last session of the last day of the championships, as it’s been viewed as being a hot ticket in town. Two Brits could well end up on the podium, both friends and training partners coached by husband and wife duo Jenny Meadows and Trevor Painter – Olympic champion Keely Hodgkinson and Georgia Hunter-Bell.
Hodgkinson was one of the stars of Paris last year, streaking home to become Olympic champion and, although she has suffered hamstring injuries this year, she has come back to racing in time and is running ferociously quickly.
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Keely Hodgkinson says she is in a good place after receiving her MBE and is fully focused on the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo
While perhaps not quite the right time for a tilt at the 800m world record, if Hodgkinson feels it, she’ll go for it.
Elsewhere, medals could come in men’s middle distance, with 1500m runner Josh Kerr defending his world title he won in 2023.
His battles with Norway’s Jacob Ingebrigtsen have already become legendary, with the two not the best of pals. At the Paris Olympics, one of the two should have taken the gold medal, but their attention on one another allowed the USA’s Cole Hocker to shock them both and cross the line first.
George Mills, son of Danny – the former Leeds, Manchester City and England defender – is a serious contender for medals in the men’s 5000m. This season he’s beaten Sir Mo Farah’s long-standing British 5000m record and ran the second fastest 1500m by a Brit, so the 26-year-old is well warmed up.
Katarina Johnson-Thompson is always a threat at major championships, and at Tokyo she will defend the heptathlon world title she won two years ago. She was also crowned world champion in 2019, and took Olympic silver in Paris.
Dina Asher-Smith will make her seventh appearance at a World Championship and, while the competition is fierce in both the 100m and 200m, she is running quickly this season.
“I’m just really happy,” she told Sky Sports. “I think the other week in Zurich is testament to what kind of shape I’m in because, honestly, I knew that I’ve been in good shape for a very long time and I know that I’ve been putting together some great races in the past few months, but to run a 10.90!
!I was picking it out because I know I could have had faster in me that day, but still obviously I’m very happy.”
Could Dina Asher-Smith medal at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo?
Also very quick is Daryll Neita, who finished fourth in the women’s Olympic 100m final in Paris, narrowly missing out on a medal. She did, however, take home an Olympic Silver medal from the 4x100m women’s relay and in Tokyo it is expected that Great Britain and Northern Ireland medal in all five relay disciplines.
Individually, in the men’s sprint events (100m and 200m), Zharnel Hughes should at the very least make finals, as the qualified pilot has run sub-10 seconds in the 100m and sub-20 seconds in the 200m. With age, Hughes seems to get faster, as he broke both British 100m and 200m records in 2023, the same year he took his first ever global medal, a bronze at the last World Athletics Championships.
“Obviously the experience has been taking me into finals and stuff like that,” he said. “I’ve always been one to be reckoned with when it comes to the championships. I’ve always been able to position myself into the finals at every major championship.
“Unfortunately, last year it didn’t get to happen due to injury, but I’m feeling confident and I’m looking forward to getting myself on that podium for sure. I’ll be giving it my very best, I’m filled with determination and I’m quite confident in my ability that I can always catch you at the very end.
“I’m trusting myself and trusting my speed. The work that I’ve put in leading up to this championship has been tremendous. It’s going to be great.”
While the British team is medal heavy on expectation from the track, also keep an eye on pole-vaulter Molly Caudery. She won the 2024 World Indoor title and won the Diamond League meeting in Doha in May.
The Cornishwoman is a huge talent was expected to challenge for the gold at the Olympics last year, but had a shocker and failed to even qualify for the final. The 25-year-old is determined to learn the mental lesson from a year ago.
