A rematch of the Rio final could be in the offing as reigning champion Shaunae Miller-Uibo of the Bahamas has entered the 400m as well as the 200m. She has the fastest time of the year in the field at 49.08, but Hayes won the Trials in 49.78, her second-fastest time ever, and also dipped under 50 at Miramar in April. Hayes was the 2016 World Indoors bronze medalist and picked up gold in the 4x400m at the 2017 Worlds and 2016 and 2018 World Indoors. Felix was the silver medalist behind Miller-Uibo in 2016 and is the most decorated U.S. woman in Olympic track and field history with nine medals, six of them gold. She was second at the Trials in 50.02 and has a PR of 49.26 that was set in winning the 2015 World gold.
Jonathas was the top U.S. finisher at the 2019 Worlds, taking fourth in a lifetime best 49.60, and was only .01 behind Felix at the Trials. She anchored the U.S. 4x400m relay to gold in Doha and was the 2019 NCAA champion for South Carolina. Stephenie Ann McPherson of Jamaica will also be a gold medal threat with a PR of 49.61 set at her national championships. There won't be any theatrics from Usain Bolt after this race since the world-record holder retired in 2017.
The triple Olympic gold medalist will be watching from home as an American possibly takes gold in this event for the first time since Justin Gatlin won gold in 2004. Christian Coleman, the 2019 world champion and the sixth-fastest man in history, is not competing since he is serving a suspension for missing three drug tests in a 12-month span. Trayvon Bromell, 26,has filled the void as the fastest man of the year with a personal best of 9.77. In 2016, he made the Olympic final and finished eighth but was competing with a heel injury that ultimately led to him being taken off the track in a wheelchair.
He underwent two surgeries on his Achilles but the extra year allowed him more time to return to top form and he won the U.S. De Grasse already has three Olympic medals and four world championship medals to his name heading into Tokyo. He made history at the 2016 Rio Games, becoming the first Canadian athlete to win Olympic medals in all three sprint events. He took home bronze in the 100m with a personal best of 9.91 seconds, finishing just behind American Gatlin and Bolt. De Grasse followed his 100m performance with a silver medal in the 200m and closed his Olympic debut by anchoring the Canadian 4x100m relay team to a bronze medal. De Grasse will look to add an Olympic gold medal to his collection this year.
Kunz put together a magnificent string of individual event personal bests in Eugene to win with 6,703 points, while Williams was close behind at 6,683 and Bougard third at 6,667. This will be the first Olympic trip for Kunz, a former collegiate soccer player, but she was the 2019 Pan American Games silver medalist and finished 13th at the Worlds in Doha. Williams was fifth at Doha and took 17th at Rio, and she was twice a top-10 finisher in the pentathlon at the World Indoors. The 2014 world U20 gold medalist in the 100m hurdles, Williams was eighth in the heptathlon at the 2012 meet. Bougard is also making her Olympic debut after four straight appearances at the Worlds, capped by her fourth-place effort at Doha where she missed a medal by 90 points. Defending Olympic champion Nafi Thiam of the Netherlands is the top gold medal threat after a fine indoor season that saw her win the European pentathlon, and she has a lifetime best of 7,013.
Britain's Katarina Johnson-Thompson was the 2019 Worlds gold medalist but has struggled with injuries. World record holder Harrison was sixth at the Trials in 2012 and missed out on an Olympic berth, but she came back with a vengeance and is poised to pick up her first medal at the Games. After missing out on the Rio team, Harrison romped to a 12.20 at London in July 2016 to take down the WR, and she was the 2018 World Indoor gold medalist in the 60mH before taking silver outdoors at Doha in 2019. She swept the NCAA sprint hurdles golds for Kentucky in 2015 and has won five U.S. titles. Clemons is another Olympic debutante after clocking 12.53 in the Trials final.
She was the silver medalist behind Harrison at the 2018 World Indoors and was fifth in the 100mH at the 2017 Worlds. Cunningham won the Toyota USATF Indoors gold in the 60mH last year and ran a PR 12.53 at the Trials to nab her first international berth. Another former Kentucky star, Puerto Rico's Jasmine Camacho-Quinn, is the world leader this year at 12.32 and has won seven finals. One other former NCAA start to watch is Nigeria's Tobi Amusan, who was fourth at Doha in 2019 and has a PR of 12.48.
Valarie Allman won Team USA's first gold medal in Tokyo with a breakthrough performance in the women's discus. The national champion won the event with a throw of 68.98 meters, beating silver medalist Kristin Pudenz of Germany and bronze medalist Yaimé Pérez of Cuba. Pérez won gold at the 2019 IAAF World Championships in Doha, Qatar while Allman finished seventh at the championship two years ago.
Greece's Katerina Stefanidi has not missed a podium since her Olympic gold medal in 2016. She took gold a year later at the world championships before settling for bronze in 2019. Russian Anzhelika Sidorova won gold at the 2019 world championships and has the second-highest vault of 2021 with a 4.91m clearance. However, a new star has emerged in Team USA's Katie Nageotte, whose 4.95m clearance took the top spot at trials. Nagoette's only previous appearance at a world championship or Olympics was her seventh place finish at the 2019 world championships, but she's undefeated this season in her two Diamond League appearances. Sandi Morris, the 2016 Olympic silver medalist and 2017 and '19 world championship silver medalist, looks to become just the second U.S. woman with two Olympic medals.
Crouser has recorded more than 130 throws farther than 22 meters in his career. He can become the first back-to-back Olympic gold medalist since Parry O'Brien won in 1952 and 1956. In one of the tightest finishes of the Games, Italy secured another Olympic gold medal in the men's 4x100-meter relay. The race came down to the anchor leg with Filippo Tortu passing race-leader Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake of Great Britain just before the finish line. The Italian team, which also included Lorenzo Patta, Olympic 100-meter champion Lamont Marcell Jacobs, and Eseosa Fostine Desalu, finished in 37.50 to win gold and set a new national record.
It's been five years since McLaughlin, then a 16-year-old high-school student, became the youngest athlete to make the US Olympic track and field team in nearly 40 years. American record holder Allman has the top three performances in U.S. history and two of those came at the Trials. Her 69.92m/229-5 to win the final was a meet record and solidified her as the top Olympic medal threat since Trafton-Brown won in Beijing. The seventh-place finisher at the 2019 Worlds, Allman was the silver medalist at the 2014 world U20 championships. Dincoff improved her lifetime best to 64.41m/211-4 and is making her international debut, while Card was the 2016 NCAA champion for Wisconsin and made the trip to Rio. Card is also a veteran of two Pan American Games, placing seventh in 2015 and 2019.
Sandra Perkovic of Croatia is the two-time defending Olympic champion with a personal best of 71.41m/234-3 and is tough to beat when she is on, and Cuba's Yaime Perez won the 2019 Worlds. What's left to accomplish in the sport when you have two Olympic gold medals and the world record? It's a question Ashton Eaton faced after his victory in Rio De Janeiro, which ended up being his final time out on the track. At just 29 years old, he announced his retirement in January 2017 and the sport sought its next decathlon star.
At the 2017 world championships, France's Kevin Mayer stepped up. A year after that, he took the world record by posting a score of 9,126 points. Mayer had to pull out of the 2019 world championships during the pole vault due to an injury.
He has recovered and a win in Japan could take him to the 2024 Olympics in Paris as the reigning Olympic champion. Usain Bolt claimed gold in this event at the last three Olympics, so a new champion will be crowned in Tokyo. The 24-year-oldNoah Lyles has taken up Bolt's mantle as the dominant half-lapper with a gold medal from the 2019 world championships along with the eighth-fastest time in history with a 19.50 personal best. Lyles's biggest challenge may come from 17-year-old Erriyon Knighton, who ran 19.88 at the U.S. Knighton is the youngest man to make the U.S. track and field Olympic team since Jim Ryun in 1964.
Brittney Reese doesn't get enough credit for her brilliance as one of the most accomplished U.S. track and field athletes of all time. She's a four-time world champion and has a gold medal from the 2012 Olympics. She snagged silver at the 2016 Summer Games behind teammate Tianna Bartoletta. Olympic trials was the third-best of the year by anyone and she said she was just training through the trials. In Tokyo, she'll have to get past Nigeria's Ese Brume, who leads the world list with a 7.17m mark, and Germany's 2019 world champion Malaika Mihambo, who was fourth at the 2016 Olympics.
The U.S.'s young stars could also surprise with NCAA champion Tara Davis and Quanesha Burks (who worked at McDonald's to help her family while growing up). The prospect of an American woman winning gold for the first time in 53 years looms ahead of Saturday's semifinals. Nineteen-year-old Athing Mu has looked the part all year, going 18-1 in 2021 races, blitzing NCAA fields throughout a record-shattering one-and-done Texas A&M season and dominating a deep U.S. field at the trials. Semenya's field-tilting absence clears a path for Mu (-160, per BetOnline.ag), but the long-legged New Jersey native began her season in January and did not race on the summer pro circuit.
Observing how other medal threats fare in the semis will be paramount given the odds disparity. The Olympic gold medal can stay in the hands of an American if JuVaughn Harrison takes gold in this event. You might be thinking, "Didn't I just see that name above under the high jump section?" Yes, you sure did. Harrison is the first U.S. man to do both events at the Olympics since Jim Thorpe in 1912. The reigning NCAA champion in both events won at the Olympic trials in a personal best jump of 8.47m. Greece's Miltiádis Tentóglou tops the world list with a best of 8.60m.
World champion Tajay Gayle of Jamaica and 2019 bronze medalist Juan Miguel Echevarría are also seeking their first Olympic medals. At the 2016 Olympics, Michelle Carter made history as the first American woman to win the Olympic shot put. Carter underwent surgery to remove a benign tumor in her ankle and will not defend her title. China's Gong Lijiao is missing the gold medal to go along with her silver from 2012 and bronze from 2008.
After finishing fourth at the 2016 Olympics, she won the 2017 and 2019 world championships and heads to Japan with the longest throw of the year at 20.39m. The fresh-faced newlywed has also emerged as a gender-equality pioneer in a traditionally male-dominated sport. No American man has managed to win an Olympic fencing title in the modern version of the sport.
Massialas, then ranked No 1 in the world, nearly became the first in Rio only to be cruelly denied with a surprise defeat to Italy's Daniele Garrozo in the individual foil final. That silver medal and a bronze in the team event made him the first US man in more than a century to win multiple fencing medals at the same Olympics. Now the 26-year-old from San Francisco will make a third attempt at a historic gold. The 24-year-old from the Houston suburb of Sugar Land could vie for gold in up to six events in Tokyo including relays. Like Michael Phelps in the pool, Usain Bolt will be missed on the track in 2021.
The greatest sprinter of all time swept the 100- and 200-meter sprints in each of the last three Olympics. His exit opens up a spot on the podium for a new fastest man on the planet -- just maybe the United States' Bromell. Coming off a world championship in the 100 meters in 2019, Christian Coleman was expected to be the top sprinter on the American team, and the gold medal favorite. Instead, Coleman missed three drug tests over a 12-month period in 2018 and 2019 and was banned from competition for two years. Coming into the Tokyo Games, Grant Holloway appeared on course to not just win gold in the men's 110m hurdles, but to break the world record in the process. The U.S. star entered as the reigning world champion and had just set the No. 2 time ever (12.81—just .01 seconds off the record) at Olympic Trials in June.
But in the Olympic final, Holloway lost speed during the final hurdles while Jamaica's Hansle Parchment had a strong surge to overtake him and win the race. Parchment previously won bronze at the 2012 Games but was not one of the favorites in Tokyo. Fellow American and 2016 gold medalist Dalilah Muhammad finished second for the silver.
Elaine Thompson-Herah of Jamaica bested the field, running a 10.61—a new Olympic record and fastest time this year—to win gold in Tokyo and claim the title of fastest woman in the world. Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Shericka Jackson finished second (10.74) and third (10.76), respectively, completing the Jamaican sweep of the podium. Poland's Anita Włodarczyk is the greatest women's hammer thrower of all time with the world record (82.98m), the top 15 throws in history, four world championship gold medals and the last two Olympic gold medals.
However, she has not been as dominant since undergoing season-ending knee surgery in July 2019, and her season's best of 77.93 is just third in the world. The top honors go to DeAnna Price, who bettered her own U.S. record with an 80.31m toss to win at the Olympic trials. Fellow U.S. throwerBrooke Anderson is No. 2 with a 78.18m personal best from April. Any medal would be a first for the Team USA since no woman has cracked the top five at the Olympics since the women's event debuted in 2000. Mondo Duplantis has been a prodigy in this event since high school and, at 21 years old, already holds the world record for the pole vault outdoors (6.15m) and indoors (6.18m).
He was born and raised in Louisiana, but competes for Sweden since his mother is Swedish and he spent many summers training and growing up there. Renaud Lavillenie,who was the 2012 Olympic champion, has seen a resurgence in 2021 with the second-highest vault of the year at 5.92m. He could become just the second man in history to medal three times at the Olympics. U.S. Olympic Trials champion Chris Nilsen and 2016 Olympic bronze medalist Sam Kendricks will also be in the mix as the U.S. seeks its first gold medal since Timothy Mack won in 2004. Dutch star Jorinde van Klinken, 21, is having the season of her life with a 70.22m throw in May and then a win at the NCAA championships for Arizona State.
She was a world junior championship bronze medalist in 2018 but could get her first senior medal in Tokyo. Valarie Allman set the U.S. record of 70.15 last year and sits at No. 2 in the world with her 70.01m toss to win at the Olympic trials. Only two U.S. women have ever won gold in this event—Lillian Copeland and Stephanie Brown Trafton . Thompson-Herah looked a touch better in Round 1; this bet makes sense.
But her years-long Achilles trouble has intervened more in meets with rounds, and she left the 2017 and '19 world championships without a medal. Saturday's semifinal round will begin barely two hours before the finals. In a field that dwarfs the men's side for depth, this injury inserts uncertainty. On what appears to be a fast Tokyo track, this final will mark the first time Florence Griffith-Joyner's suspicious Olympic record (10.62) is potentially in danger.
Thompson-Herah will need to hope her injury cooperates to win a race that might well require a sub-10.7-second clocking for gold. An all-hands-on-deck women's 200 meters would probably be the Games' best field, but the men's 400 hurdles may feature the top race. It took just a 47.73-second time to win gold in this event in Rio; that might not be good enough for fifth in Tokyo. Combining for 13 of the top 20 times in history, Norway's Karsten Warholm and the USA's Rai Benjamin have elevated this event onto another tier. Warholm's 46.70 at his season debut this month in Oslo broke Kevin Young's 29-year-old world record. Felix will try to make her fifth Olympic team anyway; she plans on running the 200m and 400m at the US trials in June.
Another medal in Tokyo would move her level with Carl Lewis's record as the most decorated US Olympic track and field athlete ever, man or woman. The biggest head-to-head showdown on the track in Tokyo will likely be won by an American -- the question is just which one. Dalilah Muhammad stood atop the podium in Rio for the women's 400-meter hurdles, and she spent most of the last four years ascending to the same spot in competitions around the globe. She won gold in the 2019 world championships in world record time (52.16 seconds) and would've been a heavy favorite to win if the Olympics had taken place in 2020. But McLaughlin, the youngest track athlete on the Olympic team in 2016, hit her peak at the perfect time.
Benjamin, the silver medalist in the event at the 2019 world championships in Qatar, set a meet record with a finish in 46.83 seconds. It was also a personal best and gave him the world-leading time this season. Sha'Carri Richardson might have outshined most of the 600-plus members of the U.S. team. But Richardson was suspended a month after testing positive for THC, the main ingredient of marijuana, and won't compete at the Games, a punishment that ignited worldwide furor. Bromell currently holds the world-leading mark for the 100m in 2021, running a 9.77-second time 15 days before making the U.S. team at the Olympic track and field trials. The 26-year-old has run step-for-step with some of the best in the world, including Bolt before a left heel injury sidelined him ahead of the 2016 Rio Games.
