Ultimate field stars to watch

Ahead of the inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest, we pick out some of the stars to watch out for in the field events.

Mondo Duplantis

There has been a cloak of invincibility to the Swedish pole vaulter in recent times. He had not lost for three years until he suffered a rare defeat at his home Diamond League event in Stockholm and then as an injury precaution he retired from the competition in London. Expect normal service to be resumed for the multiple Olympic and world champion come Budapest, although a strong challenge could again come from Emmanouil Karalis who has also raised the bar this year. Duplantis set his latest world record of 6.31m in March and, talking of records, he released his latest as the anthem for the Ultimate Championship.

Yaroslava Mahuchikh

Life on the road had taken its toll on the Ukrainian so her coach Tatiana Stepanova advised her to return to her homeland despite the Russian invasion still going, now into its fifth year. Training locally and meeting children in the area acted as a spark to her own training regimen and she went on to be crowned champion at the World Indoor Championships in Toruń in March. The best clearance of the season by her, or anyone else for that matter, is the 2.03m she managed in her native Ukraine all the way back in January, but there have been multiple clearances over two metres since that point.

Ethan Katzberg

Setting foot inside the Gyula Zsivotzky National Athletics Centre in Budapest always seems to have the desired effect on Canadian Katzberg. It was here that he properly announced himself as the world’s premier hammer thrower by winning the world title in 2023. He went on to retain that title two years later as well as celebrate Olympic glory and most recently he was crowned Commonwealth Games champion for the first time in Glasgow. He has thrown 83.64m this season – in Budapest, of all places.

Thea LaFond

Dancing was a young Thea LaFond's first passion growing up, enrolled in classes and flitting from ballet to jazz to tap before trying out athletics for the first time at the age of 13 at the suggestion of her high-school friends. Dance's loss has been athletics' gain as the Dominican athlete has increasingly shone from winning both the Olympics and World Indoors in 2024 to her most recent title, the Commonwealths, in Glasgow in August. She broker her national record with a best of 15.02m for Olympic glory and shattered that this season with a 15.25m in Zagreb.

Militadis Tentoglou

The two-time Olympic champion seems to be returning to his best form at exactly the right time. At his national championships in Volos at the end of July, he recorded his best ever series of jumps with three over the 8.60m mark. His best of 8.66m sets the standard for the long jump in 2026 and it’s worth noting that no other man has gone beyond 8.51m so far this season. Last season he finished 11th at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo but he is returning to Budapest and the scene of his previous world title win in 2023.

Yan Ziyi

The Chinese teenager has burst on to the senior stage this season, backing up her world U20 title win in 2024. She still belongs to that age category but is living up the adage that age is nothing but a number. The day after turning 18, she flung the javelin 71.74m at the Diamond League in Xiamen to put herself second on the world all-time list. She has proved the form athlete in the Diamond League since with victories in Oslo, Paris and Monaco.