The biggest names in athletics will be going head-to-head for global honours over nine days of action at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Japan.
The end-of-season championships begin tomorrow, with the likes of Olympic 800m champion Keely Hodgkinson and fellow Paris 2024 medallists Josh Kerr, Katarina Johnson-Thompson, Matthew Hudson-Smith and Georgia Hunter Bell among Great Britain's podium hopes. The relay teams will also aim to deliver once again after supplying five of GB's 10 athletics medals at last summer's Games, beginning with the mixed 4x400m final on the opening night at Japan National Stadium.
That total in Paris was GB's best return at an Olympics for 40 years and followed the team's joint-best World Championships haul of 10 medals in 2023. Olympic 100m champions Noah Lyles and Julien Alfred, Swedish pole vault star Armand Duplantis, Kenya's Faith Kipyegon and Norway's Jakob Ingebrigtsen are among the global stars targeting gold in the Japanese capital.
Total prize money of $8.5m (£6.2m) is on offer, with gold medal winners receiving $70,000 (£52,000), with a $100,000 (£74,000) world record bonus also available. Tokyo is preparing to host a premier sporting event for the first time since the 2020 Olympics, which were postponed one year and had to be held behind closed doors because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Extreme heat is expected during the championships, with temperatures likely to exceed 30C. American Lyles will target a third consecutive global 100m gold after winning a spectacular Olympic final by just five-thousandths of a second, as he seeks to retain three world titles.
Compatriot - and this year's fastest man - Kenneth Bednarek, Jamaicans Kishane Thompson and Oblique Seville, and Olympic 200m champion Letsile Tebogo are among his main rivals. Alfred stormed to the women's 100m title in Paris to deliver St Lucia's first Olympic medal of any colour, before taking 200m silver, and will once again target a sprint double.
The women's 100m and 4x100m relay will feature Jamaica's 10-time world champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce seeking to end her career by adding to her 24 global medals, but Olympic 200m champion Gabby Thomas has been ruled out by injury. Having broken the men's pole vault world record for a 13th time in August, Duplantis will be expected to not only capture his fifth consecutive global title but also target a first clearance above 6.30m and the $100,000 record bonus.
Distance-running great Kipyegon, winner of seven golds and three silvers across the past eight global championships, is the red-hot favourite to claim a fifth consecutive global 1500m gold. Ingebrigtsen's preparations have been disrupted by injury but, after being thwarted by Britons Kerr and Jake Wightman in the past two world 1500m finals, the three-time global 5,000m champion will be determined to secure the one major title which has evaded him.
Belgian heptathlete Nafi Thiam comes up against fellow two-time world champion Johnson-Thompson in her pursuit of a sixth global title, after clinching her third consecutive Olympic crown last year. Despite a 376-day wait to compete after winning Olympic gold, and making her return from injury just four weeks before the championships, Hodgkinson will line up as the gold medal favourite in the women's 800m.
The 23-year-old announced her return in style last month, running the fastest time of the year in Silesia before making it back-to-back wins at the Lausanne Diamond League four days later.
