The World Athletics Championships are returning to Tokyo for the first time since 1991, when it was still known as the IAAF World Championships, and to Japan for the first time since 2007, when the event was held in Osaka.
The capital will be at the center of the track and field as the top athletes from across the globe, from Japanese Olympic golden girl Haruka Kitaguchi to American Noah Lyles, vie for the world title in their respective events.
The event kicks off on Saturday with the men’s and women’s 35K race walks.
Here are 10 athletes to watch:
Haruka Kitaguchi
There may be no athlete shouldering more expectations heading into the world championships than Kitaguchi.
After bursting onto the scene with a bronze medal in the women’s javelin throw at worlds in 2022 — the first medal in a throwing event by a Japanese woman at a world championships or the Olympics — the Asahikawa, Hokkaido, native followed that with gold at the world championships in Budapest in 2023 and Olympic gold in Paris last year.
Kitaguchi is regarded as Japan’s best chance to taste gold as the host nation of this year’s world championships.
The 27-year-old, however, has been hampered by an elbow injury this season.
Kitaguchi, who lives and trains in Domazlice, Czech Republic, won the Seiko Golden Grand Prix 2025 Tokyo with a throw of 64.16 meters on May 18 and grabbed another win at a meet in Oslo with a distance of 64.63, her best of the season. She finished sixth out of six throwers in the Diamond League Final in Zurich on Aug. 28.
Kitaguchi allayed fans’ fears about her elbow in recent comments.
“Except for my elbow, my condition is better than in Paris,” Kitaguchi said during an event with JAL, one of her sponsors, according to Daily Sports. “There is no reason for me to slow down. I am confident that I will be in good condition to throw well.”
She has been front and center in Japan’s domestic promotion of the world championships and is set to be the center of attention for local fans.
Noah Lyles
The American sprinter is arguably the most popular figure in track and field and looking to make more headlines in Tokyo.
Lyles has won Olympic and world titles while also dabbling in fashion and music and other avenues and has also feuded with fellow track stars, and, at one point, seemingly the entire NBA. He has perhaps come closer than any of his peers to becoming the mainstream star the sport has lacked since Jamaican legend Usain Bolt retired in 2017.
Lyles won the 100- and 200-meter sprints at the last world championships, in 2023, and was also part of the gold medal-winning U.S. 4x100 team in Budapest.
He is must-see TV, which should make his signature event, the 200, one of the most hyped races of the world championships. Lyles will be trying to join Bolt as the only men to four-peat at the distance, but rivals Kenny Bednarek and Letsile Tebogo have other ideas.
Lyles and Bednarek had a potentially explosive confrontation at the U.S. trials in Eugene, Oregon, on Aug. 3. Lyles edged Bednarek in the 200 and then stared down his opponent, who responded with a shove in the back.
Lyles’ rivalry with Tebogo, meanwhile, is one of the best in the sport. The American, however, has the momentum after narrowly beating the Botswanan Olympic champion in the Diamond League final in Zurich on Aug. 29.
Rachid Muratake
Following an impressive showing at the Paris Olympics, the 23-year-old could be in position for a breakout performance in the men’s 110-meter hurdles on home soil.
Muratake underlined his aspirations with a statement-making performance on Aug. 16 at the Athlete Night Games Fukui 2025, where he blazed to victory in 12.92 seconds to set a new national record. The only athlete with a faster time this season is American Cordell Tinch, who ran a 12.87 in China on May 3. Only one other runner, Frenchman Just Kwaou-Mathey, has posted a time under 13 seconds this season.
The Japanese runner, though, finished eighth in 14.39 seconds at the Diamond League Final late last month.
Muratake is the son of a Japanese mother and Togolese father. He became the first Japanese athlete to reach an Olympic final in the men’s 110-meter hurdles during the Paris Games last year and finished fifth. Although what Japanese fans may remember most is when he did an iconic pose from the anime “JoJo's Bizarre Adventure” during the introductions.
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone
The 26-year-old American is the queen of the 400-meter hurdles. She won Olympic gold in the event in Tokyo and Paris, claimed the world title in 2022, and owns the world record.
McLaughlin-Levrone, however, will chase a different kind of glory in Japan, dropping her signature event for the 400 flat in a high-profile switch. McLaughlin-Levrone, who also has a pair of Olympic golds from the 4x400 relay, ran the 400 in 48.90 seconds at the U.S. championships in August, the third-fastest time this season.
McLaughlin-Levrone, who ran a 49.43 at the Prefontaine Classic in July, had planned to run the 400 at the 2023 world championships, but her plans were spoiled by a knee injury.
The decorated New Jersey native will now be in the rare position of not going into an event as the favorite. That should add more drama to a race that was already expected to be highly competitive.
"This was definitely a huge challenge, and I've learned so much this season — about the 400, about myself, about how it's so different from the hurdles,” she said during a video call with reporters earlier this month, according to Reuters. “But I've loved every second of it."
While McLaughlin-Levrone’s presence will spice up the women’s 400, she will impact the 400 hurdles through her absence. Many had been hoping for a showdown between the American and reigning world champion Femke Bol, who has dominated the event this season. Instead, the path to gold looks wide open for Bol, who expressed disappointment at missing out on the chance to race McLaughlin-Levrone, who she called the best-ever at the event.
Toshikazu Yamanishi
The world champion in the 20K race walk in 2019 and 2022 — and the Olympic bronze medalist in Tokyo — the 29-year-old Kyoto native enters the world championships as one of the host nation’s medal hopes.
Yamanishi set the world record at the Japanese 20-km Race Walking Championships in Kobe in February, finishing in a blistering 1 hour, 16 minutes, 10 seconds to break the previous mark, which was held by Yusuke Suzuki, by 26 seconds.
Yamanishi later won 20-km events in Poland (with a time of 1:20:50) in May and Spain (1:18:15) in June.
Among those Yamanishi will contend with at the world championships is countryman Satoshi Maruo, whose time of 1:17:24 on Feb. 16 is the second-best this season.
Yamanishi picked up race walking in high school and the 29-year-old has worked his way into the upper echelons of the sport.
Armand Duplantis
Better known as “Mondo,” the American-born Swede is one of track and field’s brightest stars thanks to his high-flying, record-breaking feats in men’s pole vault.
Duplantis soared to gold in the past two Olympics and in the two most recent editions of the world championships. According to World Athletics, the 25-year-old has won every international title available since the Tokyo Games.
At this point, his chief rival, other than Greece's Emmanouil Karalis, who put up a valiant fight in the Diamond League Final in late August, is the limit of the human body.
Duplantis is a threat to raise the world record whenever he competes. He has already rewritten the mark 13 times, including four times since a record vault lifted him to the top of the podium at the Paris Games last year. Duplantis set the record for the first time with a vault of 6.17 meters in 2020. He has since raised it to 6.29, the mark he set in Budapest on Aug. 12.
In 2021, an article on World Athletics’ official website called the 6-meter vault “one of the most elusive barriers in elite athletics.” In 2025, Duplantis is knocking on the door of 6.30.
"Of course the natural next step would be 6.30, and I think that would be a huge barrier for me to cross and for the sport in general," Duplantis said on a media call in August, according to Athletics Weekly. "I'll just keep looking forward and hopefully I'm able to cross that in the near future.”
Nozomi Tanaka
The middle- and long-distance runner missed the finals in both the 1,500 and 5,000 at the Paris Olympics and will attempt to bounce back in front of a local crowd that will be cheering her on at National Stadium.
Tanaka’s parents were both runners — her mother, Chihiro, is a two-time winner of the Hokkaido Marathon — and clearly the sport has rubbed off on her.
Tanaka, 26, is the national record holder in the 1,500 and 5,000. She became the first Japanese to reach an Olympic final in the 1,500 during the Tokyo Games, where she finished eighth.
Tanaka, one of the more recognizable faces in Japanese athletics, is one of the Japanese athlete ambassadors for the 2025 World Championships, along with Kitaguchi, Abdul Hakim Sani Brown, Asuka Terada and Yuki Hashioka.
Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce
The Jamaican icon, known for her blazing speed and colorful hairstyles, will bring down the curtain on her career after the world championships.
Fraser-Pryce, who has three Olympic gold medals and 10 golds from the world championships, will wrap up her career in the nation where it began — her first international senior competition was at the 2007 world championships in Osaka.
“That’s where I started ...” she told Olympics.com on Aug. 22. “Being able to finish in a country that I started is fantastic; it’s a beautiful story. Just about creating your own path and really honoring that journey.”
She is set for the 100 and 4x100 relay in Tokyo.
Fraser-Pryce’s five world titles in the 100 are the most by a woman. She won her first in 2009 and won again in 2013 and 2015. After giving birth to her son in 2017, she reclaimed the title in 2019 and defended it in 2022.
Fraser-Pryce also never disappoints with her colorful appearance on the track, having displayed various brightly colored hairstyles during her decorated career.
The Jamaican star recently went viral after a video surfaced of her demolishing the field in a 100-meter race for parents at her son’s school.
Sorato Shimizu
The relatively unknown 16-year-old high schooler sped into the athletic world’s consciousness in July when he ran the 100 meters in 10 seconds flat to set the U-18 world record. The previous mark of 10.06 was held by Thailand’s Puripol Boonson and American Christian Miller.
That blazing run helped the teen snatch some of the international headlines away from burgeoning young Australian star Gout Gout and also led Japanese officials to give him one of the eight spots for the nation’s 4x100 team for the world championships.
“He went out in the semifinals at the trials but he has potential,” Kazuhiko Yamazaki, the head of the Japanese delegation, said earlier this month. “He does not have the experience of running against world-class seniors, but we are betting on the X-factor.”
The 16-year-old is a student at Ishikawa Prefecture’s Seiryo High School, which counts baseball great Hideki Matsui and former soccer star Keisuke Honda as alumni.
Nicola Olyslagers
The Australian has momentum going into worlds after outdueling Olympic high jump champion and world record-holder Yaroslava Mahuchikh in Zurich late last month to capture the title at the Diamond League Final.
Olyslagers won the showdown with a leap of 2.04 meters, the highest in the world this season. Ukraine’s Mahuchikh could only make it over 2.02 to match her best effort of the season.
Mahuchikh won gold in the event at the 2023 world championships in Budapest while Olyslagers took bronze. The Ukrainian was one step higher than the Australian on the podium when she won gold in Paris last year.
Olyslagers, though, beat Mahuchikh to the indoor world title in 2024 and also this year.
Olyslagers, often seen writing in a notebook between jumps, has been slightly better this season as she prepares for another showdown against Mahuchikh with a chance to claim her first outdoor world title in the high jump.
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