Athletics will take place over the last ten days of the 2020 Summer Olympics, with the 10,000 metres serving to bookend events on the track inside the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo, while the climactic marathons will be held from Odori Park in Sapporo, more than 800 kilometres from the Japanese capital as road running seeks some respite from the heat.
The postponement of the Games owing to the global coronavirus pandemic has in many ways changed the face of the sport. Last year we might have expected an Olympic showdown over 400 metres between Shaunae Miller-Uibo and Salwa Eid Naser, after the Bahraini upstart upset the Bahamian at the end of the 2019 season by running the third-fastest time in history. Katarina Johnson-Thompson was ready to lay siege to Nafi Thiam in the heptathlon, Christian Taylor was hoping to become a three-time Olympic champion in the triple jump, and Christian Coleman was the favourite in the prestigious 100 metre sprint.
Instead Naser and Coleman are in the middle of suspensions owing to missed drugs tests, Christian Taylor is out of the Games after rupturing his Achilles tendon, while the same injury has left Katarina Johnson-Thompson firmly on the comeback trail. The extra time has allowed fresh talent to flourish, like Femke Bol in the 400 metre hurdles who seems to improve every time she steps out onto the track. And plenty of familiar faces have managed to stick things out for one last thrust at glory, none more so than Allyson Felix who prepares to enter her fifth Olympic Games.
48 different events will be held during the course of the Tokyo Olympics, one more than in Rio courtesy of the mixed 4 x 400 metre relay event. Last year the key word was innovation as athletes strove to train and compete via distance, whereas the Olympic season has already seen the shattering of world records alongside a host of fast times, long throws, and big jumps. Heading into Tokyo 2020, the following seven events promise to showcase the best of the sport.
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The Women’s 100 Metres
In a fallow year for the men’s competition, all eyes should fix firmly on the women’s sprints. The favourite over 100 metres will be the diminutive Jamaican athlete Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, a two-time Olympic champion at the distance, who asserted her status in Kingston at the beginning of June when a winning race of 10.63 placed her only behind Florence Griffith-Joyner on the all-time list.
Until that point the fastest time of the season had belonged to Sha’Carri Richardson, who became the sixth-fastest woman of all-time with a run of 10.72 in Miami back in April. Promising to restore some of the lustre to the sport, at least in the eyes of the American public, Richardson followed up with a winning performance at the United States trials in June. But when a drugs test taken during the trials tested positive for marijuana, Richardson was handed the customary one-month suspension, and will have to wait three more years to prove her mettle on the grandest stage of all.
In the meantime Elaine Thompson Herah was regaining the sort of form which saw her pip Fraser-Pryce for gold in Rio. Struggling for fitness after scoring a rare sprint double in 2016, a couple of weeks ago at the Gyulai István Memorial she stormed past her compatriot in a time of 10.71, equalling her winning mark from Rio and falling only marginally outside of her personal best. Shericka Jackson managed to squeeze between Fraser-Pryce and Thompson Herah at the national trials in Kingston, while Britain’s Dina Asher-Smith will hope to ensure that the Jamaicans don’t have it all their own way in Tokyo, lacking the same fast times but possessing a real competitive edge.
If there are any slip-ups in the women’s 100 metres, the veterans Marie-Josée Ta Lou and Blessing Okagbare will be lying in wait. Many of these athletes will double up over 200 metres, adding to the favourite Gabby Thomas who registered the second-fastest run of all time at the American trials, and to Shaunae Miller-Uibo who has eschewed the 400 metres, opting to stick in Tokyo to the shorter event.
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The Women’s 400 Metre Hurdles
A ding-dong battle over the 400 metre hurdles added another chapter at the American trials in June. The young superstar Sydney McLaughlin, only 21 years old but already one of the faces of the sport, kicked past Dalilah Muhammad in the straight to win the race and snatch her world record, becoming the first woman to complete the event in under 52 seconds as she surged home in a winning time of 51.90.
Muhammad and McLaughlin have been locked in a tussle for the past few years now, with Muhammad’s world record in Doha towards the end of 2019 significantly upping the stakes. Their fellow American Shamier Little has been the closest challenger, but a surprise fourth-place finish at the trials left her out of the Olympic squad. Instead Little has been acting almost as a pacemaker for the Dutch prospect Femke Bol, pushing the 21-year-old youngster to new personal bests. Her time of 52.37 in Stockholm smashed her previous best and placed her second on the world list, making Bol a real contender for a medal in Tokyo and turning the 400 metre hurdles into an intriguing triple threat.
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The Men’s 400 Metre Hurdles
If the women’s event seems too close to call, the Norwegian conqueror Karsten Warholm will step onto the track as the favourite for the men’s race in Tokyo, after breaking the world record less than a month ago on home soil with a winning time of 46.70. The world record had stood since the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, with Warholm and Rai Benjamin vying to go one better ever since both men broke the 47-second barrier in 2019.
Benjamin missed out on the world record by barely a whisker at the American trials, and eyed Oslo from afar as Warholm streaked ahead. There has been little interaction between some of the top European and American sprinters so far this year, with Warholm’s nearest challenger on the Diamond League circuit the steadily improving Brazilian Alison dos Santos.
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The Men’s 1500 Metres
When the coronavirus hit, Timothy Cheruiyot and Jakob Ingebrigtsen were among the athletes who stepped up to the plate, seeking novel ways to entertain the fans while affording themselves some semblance of competition. While Renaud Lavillenie, Armand Duplantis, and Sam Kendricks played at pole vault in the back yard, the Impossible Games saw the Ingebrigtsen brothers race from Oslo against a team led by Cheruiyot, who were competing via video link from their home track in Nairobi.
Friendships will fall by the wayside in Tokyo as Cheruiyot and Ingebrigtsen fight for gold in the 1500 metres. At 20 years old, Ingebrigtsen is yet to test himself at a major world championships, but got his season off to a great start in Florence with victory over 5000 metres against Hagos Gebrhiwet, Mohammed Ahmed, and the world record holder Joshua Cheptegei. Setting a new European record in the longer event, his prospects over 1500 meters seemed to improve when Cheruiyot dropped to a shocking fourth place in the Kenyan trials, placing a question mark over his participation at the Olympics.
In Stockholm and Monaco however, Cheruiyot steadily found form, and when he and Ingebrigtsen met for the first time this year over 1500 metres, it was the Kenyan who emerged the victor in a personal best time of 3:28.28. He was swiftly added to the Kenyan team list. If the reigning world champion and the promising young Norwegian hog the headlines heading into the Games, watch out for Mohamed Katir of Spain and Stewart McSweyn of Australia who will also be among the medal contenders.
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The Women’s 10,000 Metres
It’s a stretched field in the women’s distance events, where world class athletes like Letesenbet Gidey, Sifan Hassan, Gudaf Tsegay, and Laura Muir more or less have their pick of disciplines ranging from 800 metres all the way up to 10,000 metres.
Despite running one of the fastest times of the year a few weeks ago in Monaco, where she beat an elite field over 800 metres, Laura Muir had already made the tough decision to stick with a single event, hoping to challenge for gold in the 1500 metres. Gudaf Tsegay has the third-fastest times in the world this year over 1500 and 10,000 metres, but has opted to race instead over 5000 metres after excelling at the distance at the Ethiopian trials, where she registered the fifth-fastest time in history. Her compatriot Letesenbet Gidey is the world record holder over 5000 metres, but will instead focus on the 10,000 metres in Tokyo.
Sifan Hassan has taken the opposite route, with the Dutch star making the late decision to chase after an unprecedented Olympic treble. Perhaps she will enter Tokyo as the favourite in none of her selected events, with the reigning Olympic champion Faith Kipyegon and Tsegay boasting world leads over 1500 and 5000 metres. But it is over 10,000 metres that sparks are most likely to fly, after Hassan smashed the world record at the beginning of June, only for Gidey to knock more than five seconds off her time just 48 hours later on the very same track in the Dutch city of Hengelo. Gidey and Hassan hope to become the first women to go under 29 minutes.
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The Women’s Pole Vault
The women’s pole vault will pit the United States against Russia while proving nothing like all those classic Hollywood treatments. For a start, it will be the slight Russian vaulter Anzhelika Sidorova who serves as the plucky underdog in Tokyo, with Katie Nageotte having impressed at the American trials and during the course of the Diamond League season.
Nageotte went big at the American trials in Eugene, clearing a world-leading height of 4.95, enough for joint third on the all-time list. She shares that position with Sidorova, who achieved the same feat to secure gold at the 2019 World Athletics Championships. A consistent vaulter and a keen technician, Sidorova will be one of just ten Russian athletes at the Games, operating under the banner of the Russian Olympic Committee amid a long-running dispute over state-sponsored doping. She will be joined in the women’s high jump by the three-time world champion Mariya Lasitskene, who plans to duke it out with Yaroslava Mahuchikh and Vashti Cunningham.
If Nageotte and Sidorova arrive in Tokyo at the head of the field, Sandi Morris, Katerina Stefanidi, and Holly Bradshaw will be eyeing at least a bronze medal in the pole vault. In contrast to the women’s discipline, the battle in the men’s event will be between Armand Duplantis and his own world record, with gold for the stellar Swede a near certainty.
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The Men’s Javelin
Some of the most longstanding world records in athletics belong to the men’s throwing events. Ryan Crouser toppled one of those at the American trials in June, hoisting the shot put a staggering distance of 23.37. In Tokyo the javelin record might be the next to falter.
Nobody managed to get near the mark of 98.48 set in 1996 by the Czech icon Jan Železný, until last September the German champion Johannes Vetter threw 97.76 at the Kamila Skolimowska Memorial. His world-leading throw of 96.29 this season makes him the runaway favourite for gold at the Tokyo Olympics, with Maria Andrejczyk of Poland pushing for the same vein of success in the women’s event.
