GLASGOW (AFP) – Noah Lyles, Carsten Warholm, Mondo Duplantis and Femke Boll will lead a star-studded line-up on the World Track and Field Indoor Championships in Glasgow, the place monitor and area’s high athletes will compete. An essential first step in direction of the Paris Olympics.
Publication date: 29/02/2024 – 02:37
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The larger objective could also be gold within the French capital, however Scotland’s presence of high-profile athletes means they will present kind early, simply 50 days into the yr and 5 months till the Olympics. .
Approximately 651 athletes (331 ladies and 320 males) from 133 international locations have entered the World Indoor Championships, which can be held from March 1 to three, together with 13 present particular person world champions, This consists of seven particular person gold medalists from the Tokyo Olympics.
Representatives from Russia, which has been banned from athletics because of the invasion of Ukraine, is not going to take part. Belarus, an in depth ally of Moscow, is equally banned.
Lyles, the newly topped U.S. 60-meter champion, can be competing towards teammate Christian Coleman, who gained silver behind Italy’s Marcel Jacobs in Belgrade two years in the past.
Lyles is aiming for 4 gold medals this yr, an formidable plan that begins with the 60m on Friday and continues with the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay on the Paris Olympics.
At the Boston Games, Lyles stated after successful the U.S. National Championships in 6.44 seconds, a time that was 1/a hundredth shorter, saying, “It’s the world’s high time and a match report.”
“My confidence has skyrocketed and now it’s time to exit and win a world indoor medal in Glasgow.”
Jacobs is not going to be defending his title and Lyles and Coleman are positive to be beneath strain from Jamaica’s Akeem Blake and Kenya’s Ferdinand Omanyala.
Olympic champion Duplantis has lengthy appeared unbeatable within the males’s pole vault, setting a world report when he gained gold in Belgrade. It is one in every of three information to be set on the 2022 World Championships.
The US-born Swede arrived in Glasgow with a season’s better of 6.02m, a far cry from his world report of 6.23m.
But Duplantis is a competitor who thrives on the most important phases, and it could be courageous of him to wager on the two-time outside world champion successful a second indoor title so as to add to his spectacular medal tally. proper.
Warholm, Bol goes flat
Norway’s Warholm, the world report holder within the 400m hurdles, three-time outside champion and Olympic gold medalist, runs the 400m flat.
Femke Boll of the Netherlands celebrates her indoor 400m world report © Iris van den Broek / ANP/AFP/File
Like Duplantis, the 28-year-old Norwegian can be in search of competitors, doubtless within the type of defending champion Jereem Richards of Trinidad and Tobago.
Following Warholm’s instance, Dutch 400m hurdler Femke Boll, the present double outside world champion, additionally competed within the 400m and simply broke her personal indoor world report of 49.24 seconds.
But Bol was uncertain whether or not he would be capable to set a brand new report in Glasgow, saying he would want to race twice in in the future.
“The extra highly effective the sphere of members, the extra doubtless they’re to get in one another’s approach,” she added.
“That’s the fantastic thing about indoor athletics, nevertheless it additionally means you don’t at all times get the most effective instances.”
America’s Grant Holloway additionally broke his personal world report within the 60m hurdles earlier this month, extending his unimaginable indoor win streak of 60 and now trying unstoppable.
British hopes experience on a powerful Scottish squad throughout the British crew.
World outside 1500m gold medalist Josh Kerr, who simply set a brand new world report within the indoor 2 mile with a time of 8:00.67, ran the 3000m and Olympians Yared Nguse of the United States and Selemon Barega of Ethiopia Play towards a pair of. 10,000m winner, get internet wale.
Gemma Leakey will compete within the 800m and Laura Muir within the 3000m, the latter competing towards Ethiopia’s Gudav Tsegay, who has gained an enormous variety of medals throughout a number of distances and is the reigning world champion within the indoor 1500m. I’ll do it.
© 2024 AFP