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Compiled by David Melly, Paul Snyder, Paul Hof-Mahoney, and Audrey Allen
Top Storylines To Follow In 2025 🎇
Photo by Jacob Gower / @jacob_gower_
Happy New Year, readers! As we take our first steps into 2025, there’s a heckuva lot of exciting track and field on the horizon. There are also a lot of unanswered questions lingering in our minds from the banner year that just wrapped up, setting the stage for a season that could see seismic changes across any number of events.
Many—if not most—of the biggest storylines won’t get resolved in the first month of the indoor season, but before you know it, performances will be coming fast and furious as rivalries are reignited, records are broken, and claims to various crowns are staked.
Without further ado, here are the most intriguing stories to watch in 2025:
The ascent of Letsile Tebogo
The freshly minted Olympic 200m champion carries the hopes of an entire continent on his shoulders. With three global medals to his name and personal bests of 9.86 in the 100m and 19.46 in the 200m, it’s easy to forget he’s still only 21 years old. Tebogo ended the year with a string of Diamond League wins (and one surprising loss in the final to Kenny Bednarek), but the most intriguing takeaway from the back half of his season may be the blazing-fast 43.03 relay split on the anchor of Botswana's 4x400m in Paris. Will Tebogo become unbeatable in his 200m specialty, expand his dominance to the 100m, or move to another distance entirely? All seem like real possibilities, but if there’s one thing you can bet on, it’s that Tebogo isn’t leaving the top of the sport any time soon.
The future of Jamaican sprinting
Paris was not exactly a shining beacon of success for Team Jamaica, particularly given its women’s incredible run of dominance over the last Olympic cycle, which peaked with podium sweeps of the 100m in both 2021 and 2022. Jamaican athletics fans got very used to seeing the ageless Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the clutch Elaine Thompson-Herah, and the insurgent Shericka Jackson dominating the rest of the world, and it didn’t seem like that was likely to change any time soon… until it did. An Achilles injury kept ETH off the Olympic team entirely, SAFP only ran one round of the 100m, and Jackson ultimately withdrew from both sprint events, ceding her global title in the 200m to Gabby Thomas. Is this the end of the road for the trio? While Fraser-Pryce is the eldest, turning 38 just five days ago, she hasn’t announced any intention to step away, and Jackson, the youngest at 30, surely has the longest runway ahead of her. But while 2025 and/or 2026 may be a rebuilding phase for the Jamaicans, there’s no shortage of talented youth waiting in the wings. 20-year-old Tia Clayton was the sixth fastest 100m performer in the world this year and the men are already being led by 23-year-old silver medalist Kishane Thompson.
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone takes on GST
The famous “Formula Kersee” cooked up in Los Angeles by longtime sprint guru Bobby Kersee is designed with one clear goal in mind: performing your best in the final of one or two championships a year. But his star pupil, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, has publicly signed on for eight lucrative, but non-championship races through the Grand Slam Track circuit this season. While SML is unlikely to face a serious challenge from her fellow signed Racers, simply meeting her own high standards over an elongated racing season will be a new test—both for her and the Formula. And there’s always the possibility that someone like Femke Bol could show up to one of the meets as a “Challenger” in hopes of catching McLaughlin-Levrone in cruise control and giving her a true scare down the home stretch.
What does the future hold for Eliud Kipchoge?
Was Eliud Kipchoge’s long walk home after dropping out of the Paris Olympic marathon a metaphorical departure from the sport, or simply thousands of steps a step into a new phase for the great Kenyan marathoner as he officially enters his 40s? It’s probably safe to say that he won’t be reclaiming his world record in the event, but there’s a huge gulf of possibility between 2:00 capability and embarking on a farewell tour/appearance-fee-bonanza. Kipchoge’s fellow Kenyan Edna Kiplagat is proof positive that competing in the master’s category and competing for World Marathon Major titles are not mutually exclusive, but eventually Father Time does catch up to everyone. Kipchoge has yet to share specific plans for his racing future, but it’s hard to imagine he wants to end his career on such a sad note.
Which world records are most likely to fall?
The easy answer to this question is that recently-broken records by stars who haven’t lost a step are not long for this world. That includes the women’s 1500m, the men’s shot put and discus, and of course Mondo Duplantis’s oft-reset pole vault mark. But more intriguing are the records that appear to be living on increasingly borrowed time, like the men’s 800m and 1500m—which have both seen aspirants inching closer and closer over the past year—or the women’s steeplechase, where Winfred Yavi got within a tenth of a second of Beatrice Chepkoech’s mark at the Rome Diamond League last summer. Adding to the fun is the fact that for some notable records to fall, it may take some barrier-breaking as well. Resetting the men’s 400m world record (43.03) would likely necessitate the first sub-43 performance in history and the women’s 5000m (14:00.21), likewise, sub-14 (on the track). And marks that once seemed unassailable due to their dubious 1980s origin—like the women’s 400m and 800m—don’t seem quite as far off with stars like Marileidy Paulino and Keely Hodgkinson on the rise.
Who can stop Beatrice Chebet?
The best distance runner in the world right now isn’t Jakob Ingebrigtsen or Joshua Cheptegei or even Faith Kipyegon. It’s fairly inarguable at this point that the title belongs to Beatrice Chebet, whose 2024 season included a World XC title (her second), world records at 10,000m and the road 5k, and two individual Olympic titles. In a golden age for women’s distance running where titans like Kipyegon, Gudaf Tsegay, and Sifan Hassan are regularly slugging it out on the track, Chebet has consistently defeated them all. And there isn’t even really an heir apparent to point to as a future threat, in part because Chebet, at just 24 years old, is likely just entering her prime. She’s not in the all-time great conversation quite yet, but another double victory and a successful crack at the 5000m WR could put her at least within comparison range of folks like Tirunesh Dibaba and Vivian Cheruiyot.
Beatrice Chebet after becoming the first woman to break 14:00 in the 5K by running 13:54 at the Cursa Dels Nassos race in Barcelona, Spain.
Is Joshua Cheptegei the next great marathoner?
The Ugandan nicknamed “the Silverback Gorilla” has little work left unfinished on the track. He’s the reigning world record holder at 5000m and 10,000m, the 5000m Olympic champion in Tokyo, and most impressively, the gold medalist in four of the last five 10,000m championships, his only blemish a silver medal in 2021. Cheptegei has expressed a desire to focus more on the roads moving forward, and while his 2:08:59 marathon debut in Valencia last December would be solid by just about anyone else’s standards, it was considered disastrous for Cheptegei, who only finished 37th overall and slowed mightily in the second half. A sophomore effort with a little more dedicated focus seems highly likely in 2025, and while others on a similar trajectory have seen mixed results—both Mo Farah and Kenenisa Bekele’s marathoning careers have seen brief highs, but not true dominance—Cheptegei, at 28 years old, has plenty of time to forge his own second act.
Photo by Justin Britton / @justinbritton
The return of Yulimar Rojas
One of the saddest plot twists of 2024 was the opening up of the women’s triple jump competition: world record holder Yulimar Rojas suffered an Achilles injury last spring that knocked her out for the year. That meant that, for the first time since 2017, a new global champion was crowned (Dominica’s Thea LaFond). Rojas has yet to return to the scene, so we don’t know if she’ll be back to her normal business of inching the world record closer to 16 meters or if, like Christian Taylor, who was never the same again after his Achilles surgery, this injury marks the beginning of the end for the five-time World/Olympic champion. But even a reduced-firepower Rojas is still (literally) leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the world. Her 15.74m PB is a full two feet ahead of the next farthest active jumper.
The returns of Asbel Kiprop and Shelby Houlihan
American middle-distance fans are in for a tumultuous year. Two-time Olympian Elle St. Pierre announced she’ll likely miss the bulk of 2025 with her second baby due in May, and American 1500m record holder Shelby Houlihan is set to return from her four-year ban for testing positive for a prohibited substance. Houlihan has been publicly documenting solo training during her ban, so we know she hasn’t spent the last Olympic cycle on the couch, but the event looks very different than it did in 2020, with new sub-four runners cropping up left and right. On the other side of the world, 35-year-old four-time 1500m champ Asbel Kiprop did return from his own ban quietly last year, with only one race on World Athletics record so far (a 3:55 heat win at the Kenyan Police Championships). Their respective returns will be closely watched, both for where they’ll slot in amongst the new world order and how they’ll be received by the track and field fandom.
Ten People Who Made Track And Field Better In 2024 🙏
Photo by Kevin Morris / @kevmofoto
You know what they say: good newsletter writers borrow, and great ones steal. So in the spirit of outright theft… uh, we mean being great, we’re taking inspiration from our friends at the Gray Lady who named seven New Yorkers who made the city a better place, by shouting out a group of track and field figures who contributed above and beyond results this season. Don’t get it twisted—they still produced incredible performances of their own, but for these ten athletes and coaches also helped make track and field a more exciting, inclusive, and global sport with their contributions.
Julien Alfred: From making her World debut in a nondescript black kit because her country didn’t have uniforms to winning Olympic 100m gold, Julien Alfred has almost single-handedly put St. Lucia on the map, athletically. It’s one thing to win your country’s first Olympic medal; it’s another to get it done by defeating the reigning World champion in the sport’s marquee event.
Gabby Thomas: The Harvard and University of Texas grad is no stranger to high achievement off the track, but this year the Olympic champion also got into the meet-organizing business with the all-female Athlos NYC exhibition alongside Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Oh yeah—she also picked up three Olympic titles along the way.
Nikki Hiltz: Hiltz, already a fan-favorite for their barrier-breaking performances as the first openly non-binary runner to win a U.S. title, quickly became one of the most visible LGBTQ members of Team USA as well this summer, following up their second national 1500m title with a seventh-place finish in the Olympic final.
Tara Davis-Woodhall and Hunter Woodhall: The unofficial First Couple of track and field has been making headlines for years with their cutesy online presence and Davis-Woodhall’s showboating antics on the runway. This summer, they leveled up even further by picking up a pair of gold medals in the long jump and the T62 400m, the perfect representation of the symbiosis between the Olympics and Paralympics.
Quincy Hall: If there’s one athlete who embodies the Frank Sinatra mantra of “I did it my way,” it’s Quincy Hall. The former hurdler picked up an Olympic title in his new event, the flat 400m, in wildly dramatic fashion, his exaggerated running style and grilled grimace fueling his come-from-behind victory.
Photo by Justin Britton / @justinbritton
Yaroslava Mahuchikh: The 23-year-old high jump wunderkind has been a bright light in a long period of darkness for her home nation of Ukraine these past few years. In 2024, she continued her incredible run of dominance over the volatile event, including an Olympic title and a new 2.10m world record, breaking a mark that had stood since 1987—13 years before Mahuchikh was born.
Mary Ngugi-Cooper: A consistent presence on the roads for much of the last decade, Ngugi-Cooper finished sixth in Boston this spring before winning the Great North Run in September (and unfortunately, dropping out of Chicago). But Ngugi-Cooper has also experienced tremendous adversity, including the death of her husband Sammy Wanjiru in 2011 and the tragic loss of her friend and countrywoman Agnes Tirop to domestic violence in 2021. Inspired to create safer training spaces for Kenyan women and girls, Ngugi-Cooper founded the Nala Track Club this year and has been a champion for women supporting women in elite running.
Vin Lannana: The head coach at the University of Virginia has been a force for good in the sport for a long time, but as his term as USATF president comes to an end it’s worth tipping our proverbial hats to the man who, admittedly, has no other hobbies besides improving the sport.
Diljeet Taylor: Unmissable along the sidelines of any track or cross country race with her signature fashion and stadium-spanning cheering, the head coach of the women’s program at Brigham Young University is also a vocal advocate for developing well-rounded student-athletes and improving parity for women’s sports. This year, she coached Whittni Morgan and Courtney Wayment to Olympic berths and her BYU Cougars to a team title in XC.
What The Best Quotes Of 2024 Tell Us About The Year To Come 🔁
Photo by Jan Figueroa / @janfigueroa07
New Year’s resolutions aren’t just about aspiration; they’re about accountability. Laying out a beautifully thumb-tacked vision board and mapping out your next 365 days in your training log only works if you’ve taken stock of what worked—and didn’t—in the year that just wrapped up.
And while we’ll probably be writing the wrong year on the date line until the U.S. Championships roll around at the end of July, we won’t soon forget some of the most memorable words captured on camera or posted online by the most vocal yappers on the track and field circuit. After all, they just might hint at what we can look forward to both on and off the track in 2025 and the seasons to come.
So here’s a handful of The Lap Count’s favorite quotes from track and field athletes that we aren’t leaving behind in 2024:
“Three down, seven to go!” – Jakob Ingebrigtsen
After running 7:17.55 at the Silesia Diamond League in August, Jakob Ingebrigtsen added a third world record to his already illustrious resume (which also now includes “father to Filippa”). He took to Instagram to announce his plans to chase the rest of the best marks in the distance history books.
While it’s no secret that his white whale is becoming the first man in the 3:25s over 1500m, if Jakob wants to complete the full distance gauntlet, it would call for a lot more than just a perfect three laps of pacing. He’d also have to bring back his teenage steeplechase days and start signing up for a lot more road races than a lone poorly-paced half marathon.
“I want my own shoe.” & “I truly would like to take a shot at the world record if I decide to move to the 400m.” – Noah Lyles
Lyles has been one of the sport’s most outspoken athletes since he first arrived on the scene. When he won the Olympic 100m crown in August, it catapulted his voice to the most prominent position that a track and field athlete can find themselves in. Frankly, this entire list could be quotes from Lyles throughout 2024, but we narrowed it down to two of his most intriguing.
When making his case for a custom sneaker (he was very clear he doesn’t want a custom spike) at the Olympic press conference, Lyles claimed that Michael Johnson never had his own shoe, but it’s a commonality for top athletes in other sports. While that isn’t exactly true, it still would be a huge step forward for Adidas to release a signature shoe for the most talked about man on the track.
The second quote requires a lot more context, which Anderson Emerole thankfully gave to us right after Lyles’s appearance on the “Nightcap” Podcast with Shannon Sharpe and Chad Johnson. Basically, he’s not saying he can approach Wayde Van Niekerk’s 43.03 mark right now, and he’s not saying he’s going to try in 2025. But the eternally self-confident Lyles thinks that if he sets his mind to it somewhere down the road, he can do anything—a self-belief half the track fandom seems to love and the other half can’t stand. (It’s worth noting that Lyles started making similar claims about the 100m long before he was an international contender in the shortest sprint…) What this coming year will hold for the Olympic and six-time World champion remains to be seen, but it’s almost a guarantee he’ll be back in this segment next January.
With the first two seasons of Netflix’s SPRINT series giving fans unprecedented access into the day-to-day training of some of the biggest names in the sprints, Johnson gave fans a sobering reminder that the series shows a reality that simply isn’t the case for many athletes not named Lyles, Thomas, or Fraser-Pryce.
Johnson has made three U.S. teams (2022 World indoors & outdoors, 2024 Olympics) and has run sub-12.40 on seven occasions. But she has yet to land a sponsorship with a major footwear/sportswear brand since turning pro (although her uniform collaborations with FENTY have been some of the most visually-stunning kits on the scene). Props to Johnson for using her platform in Paris to speak out about the disparities that persist in the inner workings of the sport that may not always be apparent to the public. This is not a new issue in track and field, but as the sport reaches new platforms and audiences, keeping voices like Johnson’s in the mix will help close the gap between the haves and have-nots.
“It scares me. The value of college athletics was never about making a dollar.” – Oklahoma State coach Dave Smith
As the springtime implementation date for impending changes from House vs. NCAA nears, many collegiate coaches, athletes, and their fans are not anticipating the rollout of new roster sizes and scholarship limits with anything other than dread.
This revenue-sharing, business-driven approach to collegiate athletics has the potential to completely change the landscape of the sport we know and love, in doing so, maybe even unraveling the battle-proven system being the success of American teams on the world stage (We’re talking about 10-man cross country teams in the SEC and roster cuts so deep that 25+ athlete women’s teams might become a relic of history).
While the second-most talked about sport in this newsletter might be basketball, our calendars circled for April 7, 2025 aren’t for the NCAA March Madness championship game but instead for the court hearing for final approval of this case. Hopefully the broader public’s understanding of the possible implications won’t come until it’s too late.
“I think in the modern social media age that field events are going to emerge as almost more of the pinnacle of the sport.” – Ryan Crouser
Photo by Johnny Zhang / @jzsnapz
If you’re an active competitor in—or fan of—the field events, 2024 gave you plenty of reason for pessimism. Despite historically great performances and scintillating Olympic competitions across nearly every discipline, new endeavors (and a lot of money) introduced to the sport began to leave the field events by the wayside. While the collective tone among the best jumpers and throwers in the world was justified frustration, Crouser decided to take matters into his own very large hands.
When he announced his plans for the creation of an “American shot put league” on the CITIUS MAG Podcast back in September, he highlighted the potential for storytelling inherent in the field events and how there are so many more coverage-worthy moments throughout a six-round shot put competition than a 10-second 100m. Should the burden of growing the “field” half of the sport fall entirely onto the shoulders of athletes while track events are getting millions of dollars in outside investment? Probably not. But sometimes that’s the way the discus-smashed cookie crumbles, and it’s more than encouraging to see one of brightest stars on the infield use his position to propel the field events forward as opposed to sticking to the status quo.
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