Today marks 10 days to go until the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo from 13-21 September, the show-stopping event on the athletics calendar this summer!
Who could be some of the Europeans who will stand on top of the podium in their respective events later this month?
Femke Bol
With Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone opting to contest the 400m flat, can anyone stop Femke Bol from winning her second world 400m hurdles title in Tokyo?
Probably not, but Bol won’t be underestimating any of her rivals just a year after she faded to third in the Olympic final in Paris where McLaughlin-Levrone lowered her world record to 50.37, leading a US 1-2 ahead of Anna Cockrell who has made the team for Tokyo.
But recent form makes Bol the significant favourite to retain her title. The 25-year-old is unbeaten in the 400m hurdles this season and holds eight of the 10 fastest times in the world, including the only two sub-52 second clockings set in 2025.
And it looks set to be a typically busy championships for Bol who has been named in both the women’s 4x400m and mixed 4x400m relay pools. The Netherlands are the reigning world champions in the former and reigning Olympic champions in the latter.
Armand Duplantis
Armand Duplantis is unbeaten in 36 competitions and the Swede is closing in on an eighth successive global pole vault title having won the last two world and Olympic titles as well as the last three world indoor titles.
Having already broken the world record three times in 2025, talk of more records is inevitable but Duplantis won’t underestimate his good friend and contemporary Emmanouil Karalis from Greece who has also cleared 6.00m or higher 11 times in 2025.
Keely Hodgkinson
It took only a fraction under two minutes for any doubts about Keely Hodgkinson’s form and fitness to be dispelled.
In her first race in over a year due to a nagging hamstring injury, Hodgkinson cruised to a 1:54.74 world lead in Silesia, the second fastest time of her career and a time nobody else has come within one second of in 2025.
Having won silver medals at the last two World Athletics Championships, Hodgkinson will only have eyes on gold in Tokyo where a full set of major 800m titles beckons.
Sander Skotheim
Norway might be a country of only 5.6 million inhabitants but two of the world’s best decathletes at the moment hail from the Nordic country.
And while Olympic champion Markus Rooth might be absent due to a recent pole vault training accident, his compatriot Sander Skotheim will be looking to continue his annus mirabilis with decathlon gold in Tokyo.
Skotheim broke the European indoor heptathlon record twice and won European and world indoor heptathlon titles this winter before winning the decathlon in the Gotzis Hypo-Meeting with 8909 points to move to equal seventh on the world all-time list.
Yaroslava Mahuchikh
This might not have been a vintage season yet for Ukraine’s Yaroslava Mahuchikh but the world record-holder seems to be finding her best form just in time for Tokyo.
Even though she finished second to Australia’s Nicola Olyslagers in Zurich, Mahuchikh cleared a timely season’s best of 2.02m in Zurich which was followed by some close attempts at 2.06m.
Karsten Warholm
Karsten Warholm was beaten for the Olympic title by Rai Benjamin in Paris last summer but the Norwegian Viking looks in no mood to relinquish his world title.
After smashing the world 300m hurdles best twice, Warholm translated this form to the 400m hurdles with an ominous 46.28 clocking for victory in Silesia in August, the second fastest time of his career after his world record of 45.94 from the Tokyo Olympics.
Will Warholm make a winning return on the track where he became the first athlete in history to break the 46 second-barrier in the 400m hurdles four years ago?
Jakob Ingebrigtsen
When the 1500m heats take place on Sunday morning, the focus of attention will be on an athlete who hasn’t raced at all this summer.
Jakob Ingebrigtsen has been sidelined by a recurring Achilles injury since the indoor season but the Norwegian distance phenomenon, who is the reigning world, Olympic and European 5000m champion, has dropped some cryptic hints about his current form and fitness on his Instagram account.
Ingebrigtsen also teased in a recent vlog that he might even contest the 3000m steeplechase in Tokyo - the distance in which he made his debut at the World Athletics Championships back in 2017 when he was 16 - but as expected, the 24-year-old has been named in the Norwegian team in both the 1500m and 5000m.
Julian Weber
Will this be Julian Weber’s moment to finally win a medal on the global stage?
The German was an emotional winner on the home soil in the javelin at the 2022 European Athletics Championships in Munich but the 31–year-old has finished a tantalising fourth at three of the last four global championships.
But on pre-championships form, few would bet against Weber winning a medal of some description in Tokyo. He joined the 90 metre-club at the start of the summer with 91.06m in Doha and extended his world lead to 91.51m in the Zurich Diamond League final.
Maria Perez
Maria Perez swept the 20km and 35km race walk titles at the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest and the Spaniard will be defending both of those titles in Tokyo.
And all the signs are promising. Perez is unbeaten at all distances this year, including a notable win in the 35km race walk at the European Race Walking Team Championships in Poděbrady where she set a world lead of 2:38:59 despite stopping for a mid-race comfort break.
Bence Halasz
For a country with a rich athletics pedigree, Hungary has surprisingly never won a gold medal in the 42-year history of the World Athletics Championships.
Could Bence Halasz create a historic first in the hammer in Tokyo? The former world and European U20 champion has moved gradually through the ranks, winning bronze at the last World Championships in Budapest and silver at the 2024 Olympic Games.
But the 28-year-old has stepped up another gear this year and arrives in Tokyo as world leader, having recently set a lifetime best of 83.18m for a big win on home soil in Budapest over reigning world and Olympic champion Ethan Katzberg.
