World Championships in Athletics begin in Budapest

Today in Budapest begins the world championship in athletics. This championship, which will be held without the participation of the still suspended Russian team, is intriguing, including several applications for various notable achievements.

This world championship in the “royal” Olympic sport takes place just over a year after the previous championship, shifted to 2022 by the coronavirus pandemic. And many heroes of the championship, held in the American Eugene, of course, will be favorites in Budapest. And some are going to hunt for very bright records in the Hungarian capital.

At least in the case of pole vaulting, such hunting is a matter of course. This, of course, is about the Swede Armand Duplantis. While for all his rivals, jumps at a height of 6 m and more remain something extraordinary, transcendental, he churns them out with conveyor regularity and has already scored about six dozen. World records performed by Duplantis, although he is only 23 years old – the age by the standards of discipline is almost young, have also already become a familiar phenomenon: in Eugene Duplantis conquered 6.21, in February in France – 6.22. On the contrary, it would be strange if, in Budapest, Armand Duplantis, who is in excellent shape and in a great mood, suddenly agrees to “ordinary” gold without a sweet “dessert” in the form of beautiful numbers.

Intrigue is much more interesting connected with other disciplines. Until recently, it seemed that the sprint records of the great Jamaican Usain Bolt, who ended his career after the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, were destined to live almost forever – his talent looked too extraordinary, Bolt’s superiority over rivals, including rivals without the stretches are outstanding. But suddenly a man appeared who was not shy about declaring that he was ready to storm the frontiers of the legend.

This is American Noah Lyles – charismatic, arrogant. In Budapest, he will be the main contender for gold medals in both the 100m and 200m. But in the 100m, Bolt’s record of 9.58 is still a long way off for Liles. But he promised to try to beat the record in the 200-meter race right in Budapest. Bolt set it up in 2009, running a half stadium lap in 19.19. Lyles hit 19.31 in Eugene. 12 hundredths of a second for this distance is not so much. The best result of Noah Lyles this season, however, is worse – 19.47. But we must take into account that his strategy implies reaching the peak exactly at the most important start. Before him, the American does not give all the best.

The most curious, apparently, is the application of Jacob Ingebrigtsen. The Norwegian is a unique runner. In fact, in track and field athletics, the distances of 1500 m and 5000 m are considered, in fact, incompatible: the first one is for intermediate athletes, the second one is for stayers: different specializations, suggesting a different set of qualities, even different physical parameters. But Ingebrigtsen somehow manages to combine them quite successfully. In the lorry, he won the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, and in the five-kilometer race, the world championship in Eugene, where he unexpectedly stumbled in the discipline that brought him an Olympic triumph: the Norwegian was sensationally beaten at the finish line by Briton Jay Whiteman. Whiteman will not be in Budapest due to an injury, so the road to gold for Ingebrigtsen here should be smooth and soft, like a red carpet. But the trick is that he actually aimed not at all at a “double”, but at some absolutely breathtaking “hat-trick”.

Jakob Ingebrigtsen is going to storm the first place also at a distance of 10,000 m. And this is an ultra-hard mission for two reasons. The first is that Ignebrigtsen will face a practically invulnerable runner from Uganda, the winner of the last two world championships, Joshua Cheptegei, whose results are better than the Norwegian. The second reason is in the schedule of the championship. The 10,000m race will take place on Saturday. But on the same day, the semi-finals of the “one and a half” will be held. Moreover, Ingebrigtsen will have to start the grueling test, in which he will compete with Cheptegei, less than an hour after the semi-final performance at 1500 m. Such rides are a rarity in athletics, fraught not only with feats, but also with terrible embarrassment.

Alexey Dospekhov