History-making WIC Nanjing 25 sets scene for Guangzhou and Tokyo

The World Athletics Indoor Championships Nanjing 25 drew to a close on Sunday (23) after three days of thrilling action, marking the start of a busy year for the sport.

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Three World Athletics Series events will be held this year, all of them in Asia. After the World Indoor Championships in Nanjing, Guangzhou will host the World Athletics Relays in May and then the World Athletics Championship will take place in Tokyo in September.

Final figures from Nanjing confirm that 516 athletes participated, comprising 274 men and 242 women. A total of 117 federations across all six continental areas took part ina championships where 32 federation records, three area records, one championship record and three world-leading marks were set.

There were a number of history makers in Nanjing. Ethiopia’s Gudaf Tsegay broke the championship record to take the women’s 1500m title in 3:54.86, a mark that no other athlete in history has ever bettered indoors.

US sprint hurdler Grant Holloway and Swedish pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis became the first men in their respective dis- ciplines to win three successive world indoor titles.

Jakob Ingebrigtsen became just the sec- ond man in history to win two individual gold medals at a single World Indoor Championships, taking the 1500m and 3000m titles.

Ingebrigtsen was one of five athletes — along with 60m winner Jeremiah Azu, triple jumper Andy Diaz Hernandez, heptathlon champion Sander Skotheim and pentathlon victor Saga Vanninen — to win European indoor and world indoor gold within the same month.

Patrizia van der Weken, bronze medallist in the women’s 60m, became the first athlete from Luxembourg to win an indoor or out- door World Championships medal.