A tricky thing, to be coached by your father. Timo Northoff knows this, but at the same time there’s no one else he’d rather have guide his career, particularly now, after the young German claimed shot put gold at the IAAF World U18 Championships Nairobi 2017.

As a contest, this was over not long after it began. When Germany’s Timo Northoff walked into the throwing circle for the second round – having opened with a decent effort of 20.12m to seize the lead – it became clear the gold medal was headed his way as he unleashed a lifetime best of 20.50m.

If form lines are to be believed, then this should come down to an all-European battle for the medals, with German pair Jonas Tesch and Timo Northoff taking on Belarus’s Mikhail Samuseu.

An impressive championship record of 10.28 in the boys’ 100m by Japan’s Abdul Hakim Sani Brown capped an entertaining opening day of the IAAF World Youth Championships, Cali 2015 on Wednesday (15).

A near one-metre improvement enabled US shot putter Adrian Piperi to secure the first gold medal of the IAAF World Youth Championships, Cali 2015 inside a breezy Pascual Guerrero Stadium on Wednesday evening (15).

Barely 30 minutes after the IAAF World Youth Championships, Cali 2015 got under way in the Colombian city, jaws dropped in the Pascual Guerrero stadium as Japan’s Abdul Hakim Sani Brown sped to a championship record of 10.30 in the first heat of the 100m on Wednesday morning (15).

The chief medal challengers would appear to be the three boys who have hurled the 5kg shot beyond 21 metres. Leading the way is Swedish talent Wictor Petersson following a mighty 21.26m effort in early June.

Patrick Muller made a little bit of IAAF World Youth Championships history when the German shot putter became the first gold medallist of the 2013 edition and he did it in some style with a winning distance of 22.02m, the second best performance in the history of the Championships.

With a series of impressive throws, Patrick Muller led a German one-two in the boys’ Shot Put final, taking the World youth title with a 22.02m lifetime best from his compatriot Henning Prufer, who was second with 21.94m.

There are just two weeks to go before Donetsk, Ukraine stages the 2013 IAAF World Youth Championships, from 10-14 July, but memories are still fresh of the last edition of these Championships, held two years ago in the French city of Lille.

The starting signal to the World Youth Championship will fall for 1300 athletes from 180 nations and five continents in less than a week. This is the highest number of participants for any WYC so far. Austria will be represented by seven athletes. The farmer’s boy Lukas Weißhaidinger from Taufkirchen in Upper Austria might win the first WYC medal for the Austrian Athletics Federation.

- President Diack gave the formal welcome this morning in the Guoman Tower Hotel, London, on the occasion of the first IAAF Council Meeting to be held in the British capital since 1988.</P>