• Olympic champion Beatrice Chebet will make her World Championships 10,000m debut
• Defending champion Gudaf Tsegay looking to make amends after Paris performance
• Nadia Battocletti aiming for another podium finish

Beatrice Chebet is enjoying her reign as queen of the longer distance track events and heads to Tokyo as the world record-holder in both the 5000m and 10,000m.

Just as she did in Paris, the double Olympic champion is targeting two gold medals in Tokyo, and the 10,000m is first up on her schedule.

Four past winners of the 10,000m at the World Championships have also completed the double by winning the 5000m: Tirunesh Dibaba in 2005, Kenenisa Bekele in 2009, Vivian Cheruiyot in 2011, and Mo Farah in both 2013 and 2015. Cheruiyot was also the last Kenyan woman to claim the 10,000m title in 2015.

Although this will be the first time Chebet has contested the 10,000m at the World Championships, she'll still start as one of the big favourites as she takes on defending champion Gudaf Tsegay.

Chebet, the first woman to break the 29-minute barrier in the 10,000m by clocking 28:54.14, secured her selection for Tokyo after finishing third at the Kenyan Trials, which was won by Janeth Chepngetich. Agnes Ngetich, the runner-up in that race, completes the Kenyan team.

Ngetich, 24, is the first woman to run 10km inside 30 minutes in a women-only race, clocking 29:27. Having set PBs on the track this year of 14:01.29 for 5000m and 30:27.38 at 10,000m (the latter at altitude), she'll be hopeful of improving on her sixth-place finish from Budapest two years ago.

Chepngetich, the current world leader, is the African Games champion and has a PB of 30:04.97. This will be her senior global championships debut.

Tsegay has earned numerous medals across the past three editions of the World Championships, taking 1500m bronze in 2019, 5000m gold and 1500m silver in 2022, and 10,000m gold in 2023. In fact, the Paris 2024 Olympic Games was the first global championships in seven years from which Tsegay came away empty handed, so she'll be hoping for a better experience in Tokyo.

The 28-year-old has shown superb form this year across a range of distances, clocking a mile PB of 4:11.88 along with season's bests of 3:50.62 and 14:04.41 for 5000m.

She leads a strong Ethiopian line-up that also includes Ejgayehu Taye, bronze medallist in Budapest two years ago, Fotyen Tesfay and Tsigie Gebreselama. 

In May, Tesfay broke the Berlin Half Marathon course record with a time of 1:03:35, the fifth-fastest performance in history. Both she and Gebreselama will participate in their first World Championships

Nadia Battocletti is also a strong medal prospect. The Italian bagged Olympic silver at this distance last year, finishing just 0.10 behind Chebet. This year she has set national records at 5000m (14:23.15), 3000m (8:26.27), 1500m (3:58.15) and 5km (14:32).

USA will be represented by Emily Infeld, Elise Cranny and Weini Kelati Frezghi, while other contenders include Kazkhstan’s Daisy Jepkemei, Great Britain’s Calli Hauger-Thackery and Japan’s Ririka Hironaka.

Michelle Katami for World Athletics