DOHA, Qatar – With a team of gold medal contenders in some of the deepest fields in the sport’s history, the U.S. track and field team is threatening to break some records at the 2019 IAAF World Track and Field Championships.
U.S. athletes will not only be competing for medals in Doha, but they’ll be setting the stage for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo and the 2021 world championships in Eugene, which will be first outdoor world championships ever held in the United States.
“This world championships really kicks off a big three years,” shot putter Ryan Crouser said at a press conference on Wednesday. “We move from here to a relatively short year with Tokyo in 2020, and then after that we’ll have a world championships that will be special for Team USA.”
Crouser, 26, enters Doha as, oddly enough, the veteran in a young shot put field that’s unparalleled in event history. This year five competitors have already surpassed the 22-meter barrier, which is 72 feet, 2 ¼ inches.
The field comes after a record seven men threw beyond 68-10 ¾ inches at the 2017 world championships.
“Shot put right now is at its highest level ever,” Crouser said.
Emma Coburn already ushered in an American breakthrough in her event, the 3,000-meter steeplechase, by becoming the first U.S. woman to win an Olympic medal in the event with a bronze in 2016. She followed that up with a gold medal at the 2017 world championships, with teammate Courtney Frerichs finishing second.
“Just glancing up on the Jumbotron in the race and seeing the other blond ponytail and the blue jersey right behind me was motivating,” Coburn said.
Coburn and Frerichs come to Doha as contenders. But Kenyan Beatrice Chepkoech’s world record of 8 minutes, 44.32 seconds in 2018 — which was over eight seconds faster than the previous record of 8:52.78 — and her blistering 1,000-meter splits to open her races since are forcing the rest of the field to adjust to a 10-second difference from just a year ago.
“There’s definitely changes in the event that I’m trying to adapt to and figure out how my talents and my abilities can fit into that,” Coburn said. “I’m definitely learning.”
Doha marks the first major event since Chepkoech’s world record time, and Coburn’s expectations are high.
“After winning bronze in Rio my goals of every championship from now on is to be on that podium,” she said. “Anything less than that will always be a little disappointing because I got to experience that two years in a row.”
In the women’s 400-meter hurdles, Dalilah Muhammad enters the world championship having already set a world record of 52.20 at U.S. nationals. On Wednesday, she doubled down on her claim that it won’t last for long.
“I said that because I think the field is so deep, and I don’t think I’m at my best with 52.20,” she said.
On the men’s side, Rai Benjamin could be on the precipice of setting his own record in the 400-meter hurdles after clocking the third fastest time in history at the Diamond League Final with 46.98. Yet Benjamin didn’t even win that race. Norway’s Karsten Warholm finished .06 ahead of him with the second fastest time in history.
At 22 and 23 years old, respectively, Benjamin and Warholm have the record books on watch in Doha and beyond.
Between both the men’s and women’s fields, the history of the 400-meter hurdles is being reshaped.
“It is kind of weird how over the past two, three years the event has elevated so much,” Benjamin said. “Everyone is just a competitor. This group that we have on the men’s and women’s sides, they are just talented, and each person wants to be the best.”
As the U.S. athletes contend for medals and threaten to break records at this year’s world championships, they are already anticipating what it will be like to do the same at the 2021 world championships in Eugene.
“I think a world championship at home is any athlete’s dream come true,” Coburn said.
Keep up the good work Alex.