World Championships: Melissa Jefferson-Wooden (USA) 10.61 World Indoor Championships (60m): Mujinga Kambundji (SUI) 7.04 Wanda Diamond League: Julien Alfred (LCA) 10.76 South American Championships: Vitoria Cristina Rosa (BRA) 11.21 Asian Championships: Xiaojing Liang (CHN) 11.37 NACAC Championships: Jonielle Smith (JAM) 11.05
Season snapshot
Olympic bronze medallist in Paris last year, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden was a sprinter transformed in 2026, putting together a perfect season of 12 consecutive victories over 100m, culminating in her first world title in the fastest time of the year. Her personal best of 10.61 in the Tokyo final made her the fourth fastest in history behind only Florence Griffith-Joyner (10.49), Elaine Thompson-Herah (10.54) and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (10.60) – rare air indeed.
Jefferson-Wooden opened her season with a win at the first Grand Slam Track meeting in Kingston in April and gained speed and confidence as the season unfolded, breaking 10.70 three times – at the USA Championships in Eugene (10.65), the Diamond League meeting in Chorzow (10.66) and in the World Championships final in Tokyo.
Olympic champion Julien Alfred had a strong start to her season, but her momentum was slowed in late July with an untimely leg injury. She returned to win the Diamond League final in Zurich in a season’s best of 10.76, but did not quite have her best form in Tokyo, and ended as the bronze medallist.
The rise of Jamaica’s 21-year-old Clayton twins as a global threat at senior level provided another highlight of the year. Tina Clayton graduated from world U20 champion to senior silver medallist in 12 months, setting a personal best of 10.76, while her sister Tia broke through to win her first Diamond League event in Chorzow (10.83), finished second in the Diamond League final, and may also have challenged for a medal in Tokyo, but an injury during the Jamaican Trials prevented her from qualifying for the individual event.
Their arrival was timely as one of history’s greatest female sprinters, Jamaica’s five-times world 100m champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce vacated the stage at 38, ending her fabled career with a sixth place in her sixth world 100m final appearance. One final medal, silver in the women's 4x100m, lifted her career tally to 17.
World Championships: Oblique Seville (JAM) 9.77 World Indoor Championships (60m): Jeremiah Azu (GBR) 6.49 Wanda Diamond League: Christian Coleman (USA) 9.97 South American Championships: Felipe Bardi (BRA) 9.99 Asian Championships: Hiroki Yanagita (JPN) 10.20 NACAC Championships: Jerome Blake (CAN) 9.95
Season snapshot
Jamaica has been searching for a new male sprint star since the great Usain Bolt retired in 2017. For much of this year it appeared that Kishane Thompson would be the next Jamaican man to win a global 100m title, courtesy of his personal best of 9.75 to win the Jamaican championship in June, the fastest time in the world for ten years.
With Olympic champion Noah Lyles struggling to find his speed after an early-season ankle injury, Olympic silver medallist Thompson arrived in Tokyo off three consecutive Diamond League wins and perfectly poised to ascend to the throne. He looked the winner through the heats and semi-finals at the World Championships, but his contemporary Oblique Seville put together the better race in the final to claim the crown.
Seville, 24, had also arrived in Tokyo in striking form, with Diamond League victories in London and Lausanne, and he ran the best race of his career in the Tokyo final to win in a personal best of 9.77, becoming the first Jamaican man in a decade to win the title. He not only shares that link with Bolt, but is also coached by the Jamaican sprint guru Glen Mills at the Racers Track Club.
Lyles always seemed likely to fall short in the 100m this year off a disrupted preparation but he also produced his season’s best when it counted to climb onto the podium, taking bronze in 9.89. The question now is whether the 28-year-old US sprinter can wrest the ascendancy back from the younger Jamaican pair in the coming years.
None of the Tokyo medallists competed in the 100m at the Diamond League final in Zurich, giving 2019 world champion Christian Coleman the opportunity to claim that title, although that race proved not to be a pointer to higher honours.
Britain’s Jeremiah Azu dominated the indoor season over 60m, winning the Welsh, British, European and world titles in succession in an undefeated season but could not convert that form into outdoor success over 100m, bowing out in the semi-finals in Tokyo.
World Championships: Melissa Jefferson-Wooden (USA) 21.68 Wanda Diamond League: Brittany Brown (USA) 22.13 South American Championships: Nicole Caicedo (ECU) 23.07 Asian Championships: Yujie Chen (CHN) 22.97 NACAC Championships: Anthonique Strachan (BAH) 22.77
Season snapshot
Riding the momentum of her irresistible 100m form, Jefferson-Wooden completed the sprint double in Tokyo in a world-leading 21.68, dominating the final in the absence of Olympic champion Gabby Thomas, who missed the World Championships due to an achilles injury. Jefferson-Wooden became the first woman to complete the 100m-200m double at the World Championships since Fraser-Pryce in 2013.
The gulf between the US sprinter and her competitors was almost half a second as Briton Amy Hunt earned a surprise silver medal in 22.14. Hunt, 23, was a touted as a teen prodigy in her youth but had a difficult transition to the senior ranks, and this medal was just reward for the persistence and resilience she has shown in recent years, toiling away in the shadow of fellow British sprinters Dina Asher-Smith and Daryll Neita.
Two-time world champion Shericka Jackson, forced out of the 2024 Olympics with injury, returned to the podium this year, taking the bronze medal (22.18).
Olympic silver medallist Alfred had the second fastest time of the year (21.71) but did not contest the 200m in Tokyo after straining a hamstring in the 100m final.
Olympic bronze medallist Brittany Brown missed the podium in Tokyo (6th) but put together a highly competitive season otherwise, winning the Diamond League final and finishing her season with a flourish, setting a personal best of 21.89 to win at Athlos in New York in October, which gives her an excellent launching pad for next year.
World Championships: Noah Lyles (USA) 19.52 Wanda Diamond League: Noah Lyles (USA) 19.74 South American Championships: Cesar Almirón (PAR) 20.50 Asian Championships: Towa Uzawa (JPN) 20.12 NACAC Championships: Aaron Brown (CAN) 20.27
Season snapshot
Noah Lyles has turned himself into a world and Olympic champion over 100m but his natural home will always be the 200m, and that was never more obvious in a difficult season for the US sprinter.
He struggled to find his rhythm over 100m this year, coming off an early-season ankle injury, but over 200m he was again supreme when it counted, winning his fourth consecutive world title to equal Usain Bolt’s record run. He set the top two times of the year in Tokyo – 19.51 in the semi-final and 19.52 in the final (the same winning time he set in Budapest two years earlier).
This one was closer than most as perennial contender Kenny Bednarek claimed his fourth global silver medal over the distance (two Olympic and two world) in 19.58, his fastest at a major championship. Jamaican Bryan Levell, 21, also emerged as a legitimate contender, claiming the bronze in a personal best of 19.64.
Olympic champion Letsile Tebogo was beset by a range of niggling injuries this year, and did not approach the heights he reached in 2024. He finished outside the medals by just 0.01.
This was the first time that three, or even four, men had broken 19.70 in the same race, and the first time five men had finished inside 19.80, which underlines the quality of the event.
World Championships: Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (USA) 47.78 World Indoor Championships: Amber Anning (GBR) 50.60 Wanda Diamond League: Salwa Eid Naser (BRN) 48.70 South American Championships: Martina Weil (CHI) 51.14 Asian Championships: Nanako Matsumoto (JPN) 52.17 NACAC Championships: Nickisha Pryce (JAM) 49.95
Season snapshot
In the most intriguing move of the year, Olympic 400m hurdles champion and world record-holder Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone switched to the flat 400m, and the brilliant US sprinter delivered beyond all expectations, putting together the fastest 400m for 40 years, and the second-fastest in history (a championship record of 47.78) to dominate the world final.
She became the first athlete to win world titles over both 400m and 400m hurdles. It was sufficient for the one-lap queen to be recognised as the World Athletics Athlete of the Year for the second time in four years. Aged just 26, McLaughlin-Levrone already has four Olympic and five World Championships gold medals and her place in the pantheon is assured.
The proximity of Marita Koch’s world record of 47.60, which had stood unchallenged for four decades, may be enough to convince McLaughlin-Levrone to give the flat 400m another season in 2026. Alternatively, her 400m hurdles world record of 50.37 from the 2024 Olympics stands tantalisingly close to the 50-second barrier and offers the opportunity to become the first woman on a new planet there.
Her extraordinary excellence in a new event brought out the best in Olympic champion Marileidy Paulino, who also cracked the 48-second barrier in a brave attempt to defend to her pre-eminence in Tokyo. Paulino’s 47.98 lifted her to third on the world all-time list and marked the first race in history where two women broke 48 seconds.
2019 world champion Salwa Eid Naser’s bronze medal-winning time of 48.19 also ranks in the all-time top 10 (ninth), further confirming this as the fastest 400m race in history. Eid Naser’s moment in the sun came in the Diamond League final where she claimed her third title in a meeting record of 48.70, defeating Olympic champion Paulino (49.23).
Eid Naser ran 17 400m races this year, compared with Paulino’s 11 and McLaughlin-Levrone’s eight, of which only three were outside the US or World Championships. McLaughlin-Levrone races sparingly but is a master of peaking for the championships.
Briton Amber Anning broke through to win the world indoor title in Nanjing in 50.60, completing an undefeated short track season over the distance, and then held on to finish fifth in Tokyo.
World Championships: Busang Collen Kebinatshipi (BOT) 43.53 World Indoor Championships: Christopher Bailey (USA) 45.08 Wanda Diamond League: Jacory Patterson (USA) 43.85 South American Championships: Kelvis Padrino (VEN) 46.02 Asian Championships: Ammar Ismail Yahia Ibrahim (QAT) 45.33 NACAC Championships: Kirani James (GRN) 44.48
Season snapshot
Letsile Tebogo’s historic performance to claim victory in the 200m at the 2024 Olympics has sparked something in his native Botswana and that was particularly evident in the men’s 400m this year, where two of his compatriots Collen Kebinatshipi and Bayapo Ndori dominated the event. Ndori, 26, finished the year with the No.1 ranking, but the 2023 African U20 champion Kebinatshipi, still just 21, took the big prize, the world 400m title in Tokyo.
A silver medallist in the 4x400m relay at the 2024 Olympics, combining with Ndori, Tebogo, and Athony Pesela, Kebinatshipi was clearly inspired by the success of his teammates to excel in his own right this year. He finished third in the 400m at three consecutive Diamond League meetings in April-May but faded back into the pack mid-season before re-emerging to make an irresistible World Championships campaign.
He set a personal best of 43.61 in the semi-finals to declare his title challenge, then improved again in the final, to win with a world lead of 43.53, holding off Trinidad’s evergreen Jereem Richards, who set a national record of 43.72 for the silver medal, and Ndori, who also set a season’s best of 44.20 to claim the bronze. Kebinatshipi emulated Tebogo’s Olympic feat in becoming the first man from Botswana to win a world title.
Richards, 31, has long been a world-class sprinter, winning a World Championships bronze medal over 200m in London eight years ago, but his move to the 400m has earned bigger dividends, including the world indoor title in 2022, although he fell just short of the medals in Paris, finishing fourth. He was the only athlete from last year’s Olympic final to reach the world final this year, highlighting the turnover in the event this year.
Ndori looked like his country’s better prospect for much of the year, having dominated the early season internationally, winning the Diamond League meeting in Xiamen, and finishing second behind USA's Jacory Patterson in the Diamond League final in Zurich, but he needed to find another level in Tokyo to top the podium.
Patterson had a strong season, taking the bronze behind US compatriot Christopher Bailey at the World Indoors in Nanjing, and winning the US title and three Diamond League meetings, setting a personal best of 43.85 in Zurich, but he had run his best race before he arrived in Tokyo in September, where he finished seventh in the final.
Pamela Smith)
