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Kerr bids to retain his 1500m title but faces the threat of Niels Laros in a highly anticipated showdown in Tokyo
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Defending champion Josh Kerr goes for back-to-back 1500m golds at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, with the highly anticipated showdown set to deliver fireworks despite the shock absences of Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Cole Hocker.
Kerr triumphed in Budapest two years ago and is aiming to emulate the likes of Mo Farah, Jess Ennis-Hill and Seb Coe by winning consecutive World Championship golds, but the 27-year-old will go into the final without facing two of his biggest rivals.
Norwegian star Ingebrigtsen crashed out in the first round after an injury disrupted year, before the American Hocker, who beat Kerr to Olympic gold in Paris last summer, was controversially disqualified for “jostling” in his semi-final.
There are still plenty of other threats, with the 20-year-old Dutch rising star Niels Laros widely regarded as the favourite, not to mention two other Scots in the 2022 world champion Jake Wightman and Neil Gourley.
Follow all the action, results and analysis from Tokyo below:
Onto heat number three now.
Mckenzie Long has stern look on her face as she lines up for the USA. Her main competitors in this race are Jamaica’s Ashanti Moore and Sweden’s Julia Henriksson.
The American is the favourite and highest ranked of the the runners in this heat.
The gun sounds and they power away from the start line with Moore and Long both off to strong starts.
Both women start to pull away with Long taking the win in 22.51 seconds and Moore clocking a 22.57.
Melissa Jefferson-Wooden makes a laser-quick start. Jessica Gbai of the Ivory coast looks strong too…
The 100m champion wins in 22.24, fellow American Thelma Davies takes second in 22.76, and Gbai hangs on for third in 22.81.
For those on Brit-watch, the Brits are in the later heats: Daryll Neita in four, Amy Hunt in five, and Dina Asher-Smith in the sixth and final heat.
Up next, 100m champion Melissa Jefferson-Wooden is surely going to storm this one, with the form that she’s in.
Lightning quick from American Anavia Battle, who wins this first heat in a season’s best time of 22.07, from the evergreen Marie-Josee Ta Lou-Smith. The fabulously-named Greek runner Polyniki Emmanoulidou takes the third automatic spot.
It’s go time in the first heats of the day, the women’s 200m.
Six heats, each of eight women, to decide our semi-final line-ups.
The fastest three of each heat plus the next six fastest times qualify to the semi-finals.
Olympic 400m silver medallist Matthew Hudson-Smith offered “no excuses” after he was eliminated in the semi-finals of the World Championships in Tokyo.
“It was just one of those days. It happens. That’s it really, no excuses,” he told the BBC.
Pressed further about his hip, the Wolverhampton athlete responded: “I am out here to run. There is no excuses, you just have to do what you have got to do, that’s it.”
Great Britain’s Max Burgin and Ben Pattison successfully progressed in the men’s 800m to kick off the evening session, with the Briton eyeing up gold against Kenyan favourite Emmanuel Wanyonyi.
But there was disappointment for Matt Hudson-Smith in the men’s 400m as the Olympic silver medallist missed out on the final having been disrupted by a hip injury during these championships.
Qualification for the men’s triple jump and javelin throw is currently underway, but while we wait for the first heats of the day – the women’s 200m at 11:30 – let’s take a look at what else happened on day four.
Tuesday provided another star-studded schedule, with Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone shattering the American record in the women’s 400m semi-finals to make a statement to fellow gold medal contenders Marileidy Paulino and Salwa Eid Naser.
Britain’s Amber Anning came second in the semi won by McLaughlin-Levrone with a season’s best time to qualify for the final.
And the 1500m final will be missing another major name in Jakob Ingebrigtsen, who was stunned in the 1500m heats to crash out of the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo.
Ingebrigtsen has been contending with an Achilles injury all season and was unable to race during the outdoor season until arriving in Japan.
The big news ahead of today’s blockbuster men’s 1500m final is that Olympic champion Cole Hocker will not be in action after being disqualified during Monday’s semi-finals.
Hocker, who triumphed over Josh Kerr and Jakob Ingebrigtsen in last year’s highly anticipated Olympic 1500m final in Paris, was found to have broken World Athletics’ “jostling” rules (TR17.1.2[J]) as the American overtook Farken to finish within the top-six and claim an automatic qualifying spot for Wednesday’s final.
It came following an appeal from Germany, with Farken initially missing out on qualification.
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