• Eliott Crestan tops entry list, aiming to complete medal set
• Rising talent Cooper Lutkenhaus has chance to make more history
• After Polish record, Maciej Wyderka leads home hopes

The men’s world 800m short track all-time list has undergone some serious revision this year and three of the seven fastest men in history star in the field for the World Athletics Indoor Championships Kujawy Pomorze 26.

In the absence of Josh Hoey, who set a world short track record of 1:42.50 in Boston in January, Eliott Crestan tops the entry list with his Belgian record of 1:43.83 from Ostrava last month.

That performance launched the 27-year-old to fourth on the world all-time list, behind only Hoey, Wilson Kipketer and Elliot Giles. After his silver in 2025 and bronze in 2024, Crestan now has the chance to emulate Kipketer by becoming a three-time world indoor 800m medallist. Should he do so, he would be just the third man to achieve the feat after Kipketer and Mbulaeni Mulaudzi.

Crestan will also take confidence from the impressive consistency he has shown the past couple of years. He followed his season opener in Ostrava with two more World Indoor Tour Gold meeting victories in Liévin (1:43.91) and Toruń (1:44.07) – the latter being his seventh consecutive sub-1:45 indoor 800m final, achieved at the same Kujawsko-Pomorska Arena Toruń that will host the championships this weekend.

Those three World Indoor Tour performances are among the six fastest times of the season so far and the 12 fastest indoor runs of all time.

In all three races, Crestan was chased over the finish line by Maciej Wyderka and the pair are set to clash again in Toruń.

Wyderka leads home medal hopes following his 1:44.07 in Ostrava that improved Adam Kszczot’s Polish short track record by half a second. The 23-year-old now sits seventh on the world all-time list and will want to follow in the footsteps of Kszczot, who won the world indoor title in 2018.

Wyderka will be joined on the host nation team by Filip Ostrowski, who ran 1:44.68 to finish runner-up to Hoey in his world record race in Boston.

Mark English further improved the Irish record to 1:44.23 to finish third in Ostrava and is now the 12th-fastest indoor 800m runner in history. A five-time European medallist indoors and outdoors, he will be on the hunt for his first global podium.

Splitting that group on the world all-time list is rising talent Cooper Lutkenhaus, who ran a world U20 short track record of 1:44.03 in Winston Salem last month – a performance that catapulted him to sixth on the senior all-time list.

He went on to win the US indoor title in New York and will now want to continue his nation’s strong form in this event, US athletes having won at least one men's 800m medal at each edition since 2016. At the age of 17 years and 93 days on the day of the final, he has the chance to become the youngest individual medallist in World Indoor Championships history. Javier Sotomayor was 17 years and 97 days when he claimed high jump silver in 1985.

The youngest ever men's world indoor 800m medallist is Kenya’s Noah Kibet, who was 17 years and 341 days when he secured his silver medal in 2022. He lines up for his fourth World Indoor Championships in Kujawy Pomorze, at the age of 21.

Great Britain’s 2023 world bronze medallist Ben Pattison is another major medallist in action, while Australia’s Peter Bol – who ran 1:43.89 outdoors in Perth last month – is entered for his first indoor competition since 2019.

Also among the entries are recent national record-setters Mohamed Ali Gouaned of Algeria, Navasky Anderson of Jamaica, Ryan Clarke of the Netherlands and Handal Roban of Saint Vincent. They are joined by Algeria’s Slimane Moula and Spain’s Mohamed Attaoui, who set a European short track 1000m record of 2:14.52 at the World Indoor Tour meeting in Madrid.

Jess Whittington for World Athletics

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