Friday at Worlds: Athing Mu Is Here, American 100m Stars Not Worried About Marcell Jacobs, & More
By Jonathan GaultBUDAPEST, Hungary — We are less 24 hours away from the 2023 World Athletics Championships, and the first set of LetsRun.com boots are on the ground in Hungary. It’s warm and sticky, but the track at the brand new National Athletics Centre (that’s Nemzeti Atlétikai Központ in the native tongue) looks terrific and the setting on the banks of the Danube is terrific.
Good morning from Budapest pic.twitter.com/Xv128eVbGE
— Jonathan Gault (@jgault13) August 18, 2023
With the men’s and women’s 1500 prelims, men’s 100 prelims, and women’s 10,000 final set to come on day 1 on Saturday, there will be a lot of big names in action right away. It’s going to be a great meet.
But before we get to the on-track action, a few last-minute notes from today’s pre-meet press conferences in Budapest, including an Athing Mu update and some trash talk between US sprint stars Noah Lyles and Fred Kerley.
Athing Mu is in Budapest
One of the biggest unanswered questions heading into Worlds was the status of reigning women’s 800-meter champion Athing Mu. There had been no news on Mu since her coach Bobby Kersee told the LA Times on August 2 that she was considering skipping the World Championships. But today USATF communications chief Aarti Parekh told LetsRun that Mu is in Budapest and that she had seen nothing to indicate that Mu would not be competing in the women’s 800, which begins with the first round on Wednesday.
Mu won gold in Eugene last year (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images for World Athletics)
I asked Parekh whether that means Mu will definitely be running in Budapest, and she said she could not confirm that. But logically, the fact that Mu is in Budapest is a strong indicator that she plans on running Worlds. Remember, when Kersee told the LA Times Mu might not run, he said, “We’re going to just train here in L.A. for the next two weeks and the next time she gets on the plane it’ll either be on vacation or to Budapest.”
Mu got on the plane to Budapest. Now the question is whether she can make it three straight global titles in the 800. Mu has never lost an 800 since turning professional in 2021, but she has also run just eight 800m finals in that span, including only one in 2023 (she ran three more as a collegian in 2021, so she has an 11-race win streak overall). Meanwhile her British rival Keely Hodgkinson, who finished just .08 behind Mu at the 2022 Worlds, has already run 1:55.77 this year (a time Mu has bettered just twice in her life) and 2022 bronze medalist Mary Moraa has run 1:56.85 and beat Hodgkinson in Lausanne. Should Mu run as expected, the women’s 800 should be one of the most exciting events of the meet.
Noah Lyles and Fred Kerley are not afraid of Marcell Jacobs
Since Usain Bolt‘s win at the 2016 Olympics, Americans have won three of the last four global titles on offer in the men’s 100 meters. But the one race the Americans didn’t win was the biggest of them all — the 2021 Olympic final in Tokyo, where American-born Marcell Jacobs won gold representing Italy.
Jacobs followed his Olympic triumph with golds at World Indoors and Euros last year but had to withdraw from the World Championship semifinals with a thigh injury. This year, Jacobs has continued to battle lower-body injuries and has only raced once since March: the 100 meters at the Paris Diamond league on June 9 (race video below), where Jacobs did not look like himself and finished a well-beaten 7th in 10.21 — his slowest time in a 100m final since September 2020.
Reigning 100 and 200 world champions Fred Kerley and Noah Lyles were asked at today’s Team USA press conference whether it was a source of frustration not knowing what sort of form Jacobs is in right now given he hasn’t raced for more than two months. Both cracked a smile at the question.
Kerley was all smiles in Budapest on Friday (Kevin Morris photo)
“I know what form he’s in,” said Lyles, who won that Paris race in 9.97. “We all saw it.”
Kerley, who exchanged online barbs with Jacobs earlier this year, added: “Nobody worried about that man.”
Lyles and Kerley also targeted each other. Kerley was well aware of Lyles’ Instagram prediction that he would run 9.65 in Budapest, and he had a response.
“I’m Fred Kerley and it’s my title,” Kerley said. “If Noah runs, 9.65, I’m running faster.”
Lyles responded: “That’s what they all say until they get beat.”
Lyles said he just recorded the highest maximum speed Ralph Mann has ever seen
When Noah Lyles typed out on Instagram last week that he would run 9.65 and 19.10 at Worlds, he knew it would make headlines. No one has run that fast for 100 meters since Bolt at the 2012 Olympics. No one has run that fast for 200 meters, ever. But Lyles said he has no problem putting it out there because he truly believes those times are possible.
“I don’t care if you guys think I can do it or not,” Lyles said. “I don’t even care if I don’t do it. But I’m definitely going to say what I believe I can do. Because if I can’t tell that to myself, then how am I going to believe it’s going to happen?”
While Lyles has run very fast for 200 meters this year — his 19.47 in Monaco was the 10th-fastest performance ever and the fastest anyone has run prior to a major championships — none of his 100m races suggest the potential for a 9.65. His personal best stands at 9.86, and it’s virtually unprecedented for someone at Lyles’ level to chop off more than two-tenths of a second in one year, let alone one meet.
(Ironically, both Kerley and Jacobs made massive improvements at age 26 in 2021 — the same age Lyles is now. Kerley went from a 10.49 pb to 9.84 that year, though he had barely run the event before that season. Jacobs, who began focusing on the 100 in 2018 after switching from the long jump, went from 10.03 to 9.80 that year.)
Lyles is never afraid to talk big (Kevin Morris photo)
This year, Lyles’ fastest wind-legal 100 is 9.94 from the semis at USAs. Adjusting for wind, his best performance was his 9.97 into a 0.9 headwind in Paris, which converts to 9.91 in still conditions or 9.82 with the maximum +2.0 wind — still a long way from 9.65.
But Lyles says that the numbers he has seen in practice with biomechanist Ralph Mann have given him confidence he is ready to run something truly special in Budapest. Prior to this year, Lyles said the fastest top speed Mann had ever recorded by an athlete in practice was 11.6 m/s — which Lyles himself hit last year. In 2023, Lyles has gone even faster — Mann has measured his top speed at 11.98 m/s. Lyles’ reasoning is not hard to follow: if he could run 19.31 with a top speed of 11.6 last year, he should be able to go faster with a top speed of 11.98 in 2023.
“I’m seeing numbers I’ve never hit before,” Lyles said. “If [Mann] is getting excited – which is a guy who does not get excited at all, like my coach [Lance Brauman] over here – then I have a good reason to believe that I’m going to believe I’m going to do something I’ve never done before.”
If Lyles cracks the 12 m/s barrier in the 100m Budapest, he has a great chance to win and run fast. In the 100 meters, top speed is strongly correlated with winning — in a study of 24 global championship finals from 1972-2022, only once did the winner fail to record the top speed. And any top speed over 12 m/s is exceptional — according to sprint historian PJ Vazel, Bolt reached 12.34 (the all-time record) in his 9.58 world record in Berlin in 2009, while Jacobs’ best in his 9.80 Olympic victory was 12.01 m/s.
Lyles believes that if he can reach a top speed of 11.98 in practice, he is capable of going even faster under race conditions. But that’s far from certain. Lyles has always had a terrific top speed yet has not been nearly as good in the 100 as the 200. In the 200, Lyles has plenty of time to set up his race and, if necessary, run people down in the home straight. But in the 100, the start — not one of Lyles’ strong points — takes on a greater importance. If he doesn’t get a good one, he’ll spot the leaders too much ground and negate the advantage that his top speed provides. Plus, the World Championship final is a one-off race — Lyles may be in the shape of his life right now, but if he gets a poor start, he won’t get a do-over.
For more on Lyles, he spoke about his start in detail with LetsRun earlier this year: LRC The Start: How Important Is Noah Lyles’ Start to His Chances of Success in the 100 Meters?
Gabby Thomas says she plans on quadrupling
Thomas is only entered in one individual event in Budapest: the 200 meters, where she won the US title last month in 21.60 (#4 all-time). But Thomas has also run 49.68 in the 400 this year — which is #6 in the world this year and #2 among Americans competing in Budapest. As a result, Thomas said she is planning on running four events at Worlds: the open 200 plus the women’s 4×100, women’s 4×400, and mixed 400.
It’s reminiscent of Thomas’ college days at Harvard, where she would routinely compete in a ton of events. In her final year, Thomas actually quintupled — the 100, 200, 4×100, 4×400, and long jump — and won all five.
The fact that Thomas is running the mixed 4×400 suggests the US is taking it far more seriously than previous years. After winning the inaugural edition in 2019, the US only earned bronze in 2021 and 2022, in part because they ran backups or third-stringers. But Thomas should give the US a boost, and she will have plenty of rest between the final and her individual event as the mixed 4×400 final is on day 1 and the 200 heats don’t begin until day 5.
Seb Coe says he’s focused on track & field among speculation of potential bid for IOC president
On Thursday, Seb Coe was re-elected to a third four-year term as World Athletics president. He ran unopposed and, one way or another, this will be Coe’s final term as World Athletics’ consitition limits him to three. The big question is whether Coe will serve his full term through 2027 or if he will seek the presidency of the IOC, which will open up in 2025 when current president Thomas Bach‘s term ends. Coe, an IOC member since 2020, has been tipped as a candidate to replace Bach but would not commit either way when asked about it on Friday.
“My focus was and remains absolutely entirely on serving my final mandate in this sport and completing the program that I started,” Coe said. “…I haven’t ruled [running for IOC president] in and I certainly haven’t ruled it out. But that is for another day.”
Coe was also asked about the chances of the World Championships returning to the United States one day. Given the US just hosted last year, it is a virtual certainty that if it does return, it will be after Coe has left World Athletics. But he said that if the US is to host again, an East Coast host would have a better chance at attracting global TV/streaming audiences because of the time zone after saying Eugene was “not ideal” and that last year’s meet hemorrhaged “millions of broadcasting hours.”
“My instinct is that if we do go back, I would like to explore with USATF and any of the host city facilitators out there, it’s probably better to be Eastern seaboard so that, for whatever gains you make by being in the US market, you are hitting other markets as well,” Coe said. “These are all the balances that need to be struck. I would love to see a World Championships back in the US, but under the right conditions and with the right organizing committee.”
That may take some effort — and a lot of money. Right now, there’s no stadium on the East Coast of the US capable of hosting Worlds.
