Yulimar Rojas and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone go for gold at World Championships

TOKYO – Charismatic Venezuelan Yulimar Rojas and American star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone will go for gold in the triple jump and 400 metres respectively at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo on Sept 18.

There are four finals in all, and also a first spin round the track for Britain’s 800m Olympic champion Keely Hodgkinson.

Here are the three potential highlights.

Women’s 400 metres final

McLaughlin-Levrone’s smashing of the American record – which had stood for almost two decades – in her semi-final will have sent shivers down her rivals’ spines.

The manner in which the two-time 400m hurdles Olympic champion coasted in clocking 48.29sec suggests that even East German Marita Koch’s world record of 47.60sec, which was set around 40 years ago, could be under threat.

McLaughlin-Levrone’s presence has certainly revived an event that has lacked spark in recent years.

Nevertheless, Dominican defending and Olympic champion Marileidy Paulino and the silver medallist from Paris, Salwa Eid Naser of Bahrain, will not go down without a fight.

“This race definitely gives me confidence for the final,” said the 26-year-old American after the semis. “I didn’t expect to run this fast today. I still have more to show. I feel strong and good.”

Women’s 800m heats

Hodgkinson shed the bridesmaid’s tag in style at the 2024 Olympic final and arrives in Tokyo favoured to also add the world crown after being pipped to the title by Kenya’s Mary Moraa in 2023.

The 23-year-old Briton, who is also the reigning European champion, returned to the track only in August after a year’s hiatus, having suffered three hamstring injuries.

However, she looked as good as ever as she posted the fastest time in 2025, 1min 54.74sec, in the Silesia Diamond League meet.

Hodgkinson had hoped to bask in the glory of being Olympic champion but admitted it had instead been a “challenging year”.

To such an extent that winning the world title would mean more than Olympic gold. “Whatever happens this year in Tokyo, hopefully it’s what I want because it will just mean even more than Paris last year,” she said.

“That is kind of crazy because that obviously changed my life and winning the Olympics is what every athlete wants to do. The challenge it took to get here would just make it that much sweeter.”

Moraa’s once considerable powers appear to have faded, so perhaps the greatest threats to Hodgkinson could come from her training partner, Olympic 1,500m bronze medallist Georgia Hunter Bell, and young Swiss hope Audrey Werro.

A measure of Hunter Bell’s confidence is she opted for the 800m ahead of the 1,500m. Werro, 21, has a good chance of winning a second gold for Switzerland, with Ditaji Kambundji having sprung a surprise in the 100m hurdles, on the back of her impressive win in the Diamond League final in Zurich.

Women’s triple jump final

Rojas will be hard to stop in her pursuit of a record-extending fifth successive world title.

The crowd-pleasing 29-year-old qualified for the final with her first effort, a season’s best 14.49 metres.

Rojas is back and keen to reassert her dominance of the event after missing out on defending her Olympic title because of injury.

She will be mindful of how close she came to being deposed at the last world championships in Budapest, winning it with her last jump.

“I love making the crowd vibrate with every jump,” said Rojas after qualifying.

“I love to compete and be filled with joy in doing so. I am happy to get back to my level.”

If anyone is to end her extraordinary run of success, it is most likely to be Cuba’s Leyanis Perez Hernandez, bronze medallist in 2023 and who finished fifth at the Paris Games.

The 23-year-old Cuban hopped, skipped and jumped into the final on her first go as she bids to become Cuba’s first woman’s triple jump world champion since Yargelis Savigne won the second of her two titles in Berlin in 2009. AFP