Men's 3000m steeplechase heats at the World Athletics Championships Budapest 23 (© Getty Images)
There are two women’s and two men’s finals on day four at the World Athletics Championships Budapest 23 – two track middle-distance and two field events – plus some tasty heats and semifinals.
Day four may offer a smaller menu, but every selection appeals.
Let’s start where the programme finishes – with the women’s 1500m final and the men’s steeplechase.
El Bakkali vs Girma. Can anyone else intrude?
You could depict the 3000m steeplechase final as a match race between one man who has everything but the world record and another who has the world record but no other titles.
Soufiane El Bakkali is the defending world champion and the reigning Olympic champion: the dominant athlete in the event in recent times. But he came up short in his assault on Saif Saaeed Shaheen’s then world record in Rabat earlier this year.
No such problems for Ethiopia’s Lamecha Girma at the Paris Diamond League in early June. Girma rode a late-race surge to a world record of 7:52.11, just over 1.5 seconds off the former mark.
Championship victories are another thing. Not that Girma’s record is anything but excellent, mind you. He finished second to Conseslus Kipruto in Doha in 2019 in the race Kipruto should never have won, but did, and he was second again at both the Tokyo Olympics and last year’s World Championships. He’d love to rectify that blemish on his record in Budapest but must find a way to blunt El Bakkali’s finishing speed.
Obviously, someone else has to claim a medal, but can anyone challenge the top pair? It will be tough seeing as both favourites have faster times (they are the only two sub-eight-minute men in the race) and superior finishes. But there are some interesting others in the final – New Zealand’s fast-improving George Beamish, the Japanese pair Ryoma Aoki and Ryuji Miura and, of course, three Kenyan athletes: Leonard Bett, Abraham Kibiwot and Simon Koech. And anyone in a Kenyan singlet is a threat in the steeplechase.
Kipyegon first, daylight second?
Faith Kipyegon starts as an unbackable favourite in the 1500m final. She broke the world record in Florence this year, the mile record in Monaco and the 5000m record in between. She can kick fiercely off a slow pace and cruise easily through a faster race. She is the defending champion.
Sifan Hassan will need to have recovered well from her fall in the last 25 metres of the 10,000m to have any chance of beating Kipyegon or even gaining a medal.
Otherwise, or even if, any challenge is likely to come from the next generation. Ethiopia’s precocious Birke Haylom is just 17 and already has a 3:54.93 to her name, while 21-year-old Diribe Welteji has run 3:55. Going off Diamond League form, the perennial Laura Muir and Australia’s Jess Hull have been prominent, too.
But it’s Kipyegon’s race to lose – and she probably won’t.
Echoes of Oregon
Last year in Oregon, China’s Feng Bin pulled off one of the bigger upsets when she upstaged home favourite Valarie Allman and perennial champion Sandra Perkovic to win the women’s discus.
By a simple twist of fate or, more likely, a quirk of the seeding algorithm, these same three found themselves in qualifying group A of the event on morning two. At Hayward Field it was Feng, Perkovic and then Allman. In Budapest qualifying it was Allman, Feng and Perkovic.
These three were the only throwers in their group to achieve the 64.00m automatic qualifying standard for the final. Two others – Claudine Vita and Laulauga Tausaga – did it in group B.
It would be no surprise to see the Oregon medallists repeat in the final here - but in what order? And is there another surprise packet lurking in the field?
Is it over?
They said it would last forever, an eternal bond between Mutaz Barshim and Gianmarco Tamberi sealed by their agreed tie in the Tokyo Olympic final.
Well, it’s good news for romantics. The relationship was tested in qualifying, but it survived. Barshim took the direct route to the final, clearing 2.22m, 2.25m and 2.28m first time; Tamberi flirted with danger, but came through with a third attempt clearance at 2.28m to ensure his place.
No shortage of contenders will try to tear the pair apart in the final: Barshim was joined by Ryoichi Akamatsu and JuVaughn Harrison in going through without a blemish while Korea’s Woo Sanghyeok had just one hiccup, requiring a second jump at 2.25m.
The sentimentalists can dream on.
...and also
First round action in the women’s 100m hurdles and men’s 800m. Semifinals in the women’s 400m hurdles and men’s 400m.
Len Johnson for World Athletics
