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GLASGOW (February 29) — The track and field program for the Paris 2024 Olympics won’t start for another 154 days, but this weekend’s competition will be on the agenda for athletes competing at the 19th World Athletics Indoor Championships here at the Emirates Arena. The meeting will bring much-needed results. They work hard on their training programs and provide valuable feedback on their Olympic preparations. The stakes aren’t as high as in Paris, but there’s always a lot of excitement when competing in the World Championships.
“Training is going pretty well,” said Dutch woman Femke Boll, who just 11 days ago set the world short track 400m record with a time of 49.24 seconds. Last year’s 400m hurdles world champion continued: “Every year I work on something different. This year I worked on my speed a little bit. I can already see this paying off indoors.”
Bol, 24, is the second-fastest women’s 400m hurdles runner in history and is a versatile athlete who enjoys competing in a variety of events. This year’s indoor season, she competed in both the 200m and 400m, and last year she ran the 500m indoors (breaking her world record), and the women’s and mixed 4x400m. He also participated in the relay. In Glasgow she will compete in both the 400m and 4x400m relay and it is clear that she will be ready to tackle hurdle training in the spring. She won a bronze medal at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, and she hopes to upgrade that medal in Paris.
“I’m starting to miss hurdles a little bit because I haven’t done much indoor hurdles,” she told reporters here this morning. she continued. “This is my favorite event. I say I love running the 400 meters and I love doing relay races, but my hurdles are what I love to do the most and I love being outdoors. I’m focused.”
While some athletes skip the indoor season, others like Bol welcome the chance to compete in a more intimate environment with spectators very close to the track.
“I’m looking forward to racing indoors,” Bol said. “You never know what’s going to happen.”
Britain’s Josh Kerr, the reigning world 1500m champion, came close to skipping these championships. He grew up in Edinburgh, just an hour’s drive from here, and after his world title win last summer, many fans expected him to fight here. However, the 26-year-old was transparent about how running in these championships might not be the best option as there is a lot at stake in Paris. Working with Brooks Beast Track Club coach Danny McKee, Kerr is taking practice one day at a time, after setting a two-mile indoor world best at the Millrose Games in New York earlier this month. , finally opened the door to competition here.
“I think it will take a few days to make a decision,” he told reporters in New York. “I showed that I’m in great shape. I’m in great shape. If my legs hold up, then so be it, right?”
Kerr only committed to the championships 10 days ago and it was clear from his comments today that he is very excited to be competing in front of his home crowd in the 3000m on Saturday night. He chose his 3000m over his 1500m because it fits better with the current endurance phase of his training (he also ran a half marathon last December) .
“I grew up racing here,” Kerr said in a press conference this morning. “I’ve raced a total of 50 or 60 times from Edinburgh to the Emirates and Glasgow. I mean, this place is going to be absolutely exciting. It’s great that we’ll have enough people here and that it’s like a small stadium. It has a wonderful balance between the senses.”
Kerr dismissed speculation that there was any discussion between him and McKee over whether these championships would interfere with his training for Paris. Instead, he said the two sides actively interacted and reached mutual decisions.
“No, there is no debate,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “The conversation was that the training needed to be easier than it usually is indoors. For me, it usually takes a little more time to get ready for these events. Short track sometimes Not the most beneficial for my knees. “His hips and everything. “That was the way he looked at it. For me, I wanted to be here. So I had to be very careful with what I did to show that I was in a great position.” did not become”
Sadly, fans here won’t be able to see Kerr compete against reigning Olympic 1500m champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen (the Norwegian is recovering from an Achilles injury). Ingebrigtsen, who holds the world’s best outdoor two-mile time (7 minutes 54.10 seconds), denied Kerr’s indoor best time of 8 minutes 00.67 seconds at Millrose, saying “if he was blindfolded” the Scot would He said he could have beaten the players. When a Norwegian reporter asked Kerr today about Ingebrigtsen’s comments, Kerr smiled, paused, then replied in his deep baritone, “No comment.”
World Athletics president Sebastian Coe said he liked that the championships were a showcase for the world’s best athletes ahead of the Olympics, noting that more than 600 athletes were scheduled to compete here. Just a day after announcing that the 2027 World Athletics Championships would be held in Beijing, Mr Coe told reporters that Glasgow had played a key role in this Olympic year.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m really excited to be in Glasgow again,” said the two-time Olympic gold medalist in the 1500m. He added, “Indoors has a big role to play. It brings spectators, especially young spectators, closer and closer to the athletes.”
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