The World Athletics Championships, the scene of a new battle for the throne of speed left free by Usain Bolt

Five years after the retirement of Jamaican phenomenon Usain Bolt, athletics dreams of finding a new one king of speed in the World Championship which kicks off this Friday in Eugene, USA, with contenders such as the Olympic champion Lamont Marcel Jacobs and young prodigies like Erriyon Knighton.

Four runners have shared great triumphs in the men’s 100 and 200 meters since Bolt said goodbye to the slopes with the eight Olympic gold medals he has amassed insatiably since Beijing 2008.

In the past Doha World Cup 2019the American Christian Coleman He won the hectometer and his compatriot Noah Lyles conquered the 200m. Meanwhile at the Tokyo 2020 Games, held last year after being postponed for a year due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Italian Jacobs climbed to the top step of the podium by the shortest distance and the Canadian André de Grasse gold has been hanging longer.

The four are classified for the battle of Eugene (July 15-24) along with other figures who want to shine in front of their audience, such as Fred Kerley Y Trayvon Bromellthe fastest men of the year in the 100 meters, respectively with 9.76 and 9.81, and the great promise Knighton, who holds the best time of this season in the 200 (19.49), at only 18 years old.

Jacobs, the unexpected gold winner in Tokyo with 9.80, could be called the big favorite for that great performance in the Japanese capital. But he is surrounded by doubts due to physical problems that barely allowed him to compete this year.

The son of an Italian mother and an American father, the man born 27 years ago in El Paso, Texas, was proclaimed indoor world champion in the 60 meters in Belgrade in mid-March, but was unable to run in the 100 international event.

His best time over that distance was 10.04 in a meeting in Savona, Italy in mid-May. That score places him in 40th place, with nine other athletes, in the 2022 ranking, in which there are ten runners with 9s90 or less.

At the end of June, Jacobs withdrew before the meeting diamond championship from Stockholm for a buttock discomfort, to which is added another thigh injury in recent weeks.

Thus, he was left without the desired shot just two weeks before facing rivals like Kerley, the Tokyo silver winner, who just dazzled in the American championship last month with a time of 9:76 in the semifinals and 9: 77 in the final, to take the title.

Kerley, also a 27-year-old from Taylor, Texas, also got a ticket to fight for the double 100-200 on the track Hayward Field by Eugenio.

Although Jacobs and Kerley attract much of the spotlight, the sprinter who will defend the hectometer title is controversial Christian Coleman. Even if the athlete from Atlanta, Georgia, does not seem to arrive even in his best version with only two months of racing in the 100, after having served the disqualification that separated him from Tokyo 2020.

Coleman, 26, was sanctioned in October 2020 with a 24-month suspension for violating his location requirements for doping controls and missing three tests in the same year. In April 2021, the Court of Arbitration for Sport He cut his punishment in half. It wasn’t enough for him to arrive in Tokyo and he was only able to compete again last January.

At the US Championships in June, Coleman recorded the fourth fastest time in the semifinals (9.87 seconds, his best score since 2022) and, with the move to Eugene secured as reigning champion, he came out of the final.

In the 200 meters it will be the club Noah Lyles24 years old, putting his world title on the line against fierce rivals like De Grasse.

The Canadian took revenge for his defeat against Lyles in Doha 2019, where he was silver, by winning gold in Tokyo. The American, meanwhile, was third in the Olympic event. Eugenio, therefore, presents itself as the perfect frame to “tie the tie”. However, there they will also face the threat of young rising star Erriyon Knighton, the latest athlete to be singled out as the ‘new bolt’.

Labels aside, Knighton has caused a sensation in the past two years with a series of results comparable, at his age, to the Jamaican myth.

Last year, at just 17, he participated in his first Olympic Games in Tokyo and became the youngest athlete to represent the United States in track and field events since then. Jim Ryun in 1964. In the Japanese capital he finished fourth in the 200 meters with 19.93 seconds, equaling Bolt’s U20 world record.

A few months before going to Tokyo, he also broke the Jamaican record in the Under 18 category (20s13), which had been in place for 18 years. He did it by recording 20s11 at a meeting in Jacksonville, Florida.

On April 30, the native of Tampa, Florida stopped the clock at 19:49, breaking the Under 20 world record.

With that mark, Knighton became the fourth fastest sprinter in history in the discipline, surpassed only by Bolt, also a Jamaican. Yohan Blake and the American Michele Johnson.

After being beaten by Lyles by two cents in the US championship, the young prodigy will head to Eugene for the big win that will transform him from promise to reality.

Olympic medals and world champions, established stars and young talents. The two most emblematic speed events in athletics feature a string of candidates for the Oregon World Cup. Will any of those names emerge as the heir to the legendary Usain Bolt?

Source AFP