It’s not just athletes in the latest super spikes who have a spring in their step at these Olympics. The whole of track and field does too. And the sport is increasingly not afraid to shout about it.
“Athletics is the heart and soul of the Olympic Games,” said the World Athletics president, Sebastian Coe, on Thursday. “These will be exceptional Games with jaw-dropping sport and the most exceptional talents we have seen in any generation.”
Coe says similar things before every Games, of course. But the expectation really is for Paris to bring fast times, incredible theatre and potentially multiple world records.
And, crucially, more people should be watching it now that the Sprint documentary series has introduced a whole new audience to stars such as Noah Lyles and Sha’Carri Richardson, whose speed on the track is matched by their willingness to speak their mind off it.
“The feedback’s been fantastic,” said Coe, who noted that Sprint is currently the No 1 sports show on Netflix. “I’ve spoken to people who probably would have never watched athletics before who suddenly realise it’s actually quite an interesting sport. Our challenge, of course, is to make sure that we build on the excitement that we’ve created.”
A second series is being made and already it has its eyes on a number of intriguing new challengers. The 23-year-old Jamaican Kishane Thompson is the fastest man in the world this year, having run 9.77sec, but has not raced on the Diamond League circuit in 2024. His compatriot Oblique Seville, also 23, is almost as quick. Are they the real deal? We will find out in the coming days.
Similarly in the women’s 100m and 200m don’t be surprised if the St Lucian Julien Alfred joins established stars such as Richardson, Gabby Thomas and Shericka Jackson. It is not beyond the bounds of possibilities that Florence Griffiths-Joyner’s 200m world record finally goes after 36 years, if Jackson can return to her best form.
And expect the times to be lightning quick in Paris too. Mondo, the designer of the track at the Stade de France, says it is the fastest one ever created for an Olympics, while the shoe brands promise that super spikes are far better than they were three years ago in Tokyo. The stage really is set.
But a third factor in the quicker times, which is less discussed, is that last year the supplement company Maurten introduced a “bicarb system”, which has spread like wildfire through track and field. One top British coach tells the Guardian that “pretty much everyone uses it, and it’s perfectly legal”, as it allows athletes to ingest sodium bicarbonate in high doses without side effects and push harder and faster in high-intensity exercise.
There will be rivalries galore too. In the women’s 400m hurdles, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone will probably break her world record. And she might need to if she is to beat the Dutch athlete Femke Bol. Meanwhile the men’s 400m hurdles features a rematch of the three musketeers – Karsten Warholm, Rai Benjamin and Alison Dos Santos – that so lit up Tokyo. But really you could pick any event on any given night, and find a story that will captivate the mind.
There is no doubting the optimism in the British camp here either. At last year’s world championships they won a joint-record 10 medals. And there is high expectation that Keely Hodgkinson in the women’s 800m, Josh Kerr in the men’s 1500m and Matt Hudson-Smith in the men’s 400m are all bankers for Paris – the only question being over whether it will be gold.
Don’t be surprised if Molly Caudery, the second favourite for the women’s pole vault, becomes a breakout star. Or if Katarina Johnson-Thompson can finally win an Olympic medal in the heptathlon. And there is also hope of multiple medals in a majority of the five relay competitions, even if the team had a blow on the eve of this Games when Jake Wightman withdrew from the 800m.
As team captain, Josh Kerr, who won 1500m gold at last year’s world’s championships, puts it: “There’s a great expectation. We’re coming in off our best medal counts from a world championships. That has set the standards really high for this team. We’re really going to battle for as many finals as we can. And at that point, the medals are going to be there for the taking.”
Kerr, of course, will also feature in one of the races of the Games against the brilliant Jakob Ingebrigtsen. The Norwegian won the Olympic title in Tokyo, beating Kerr into third. But last year he lost to Kerr at the worlds in Budapest, and the British captain wonders if his opponent will be remembering it when he steps on the start line.
“It would surprise me if it didn’t play on his mind,” he says. “But again, I don’t think it’s just me. I think there’s a fantastic slew of 1500m runners that are all going: ‘We can win this in different ways’. But Jakob won the Olympics in 2021 in an Olympic record and you don’t lose that. And he’s obviously run faster this year. So I’m just looking to go out and execute. And I believe I can do that better than anyone else in the world.
“My goal is very simple,” adds Kerr. “I’ve spoken about it enough. I have had a very smooth camp. I’m coming in really confident. And I’m ready to go after it.”
It is a motto that multiple athletes will share. And track and field will hope that golds on track will lead to greenbacks and eyeballs off it.
