One Ticket To Tokyo, Please ⏱️

Sponsored by New Balance

One of our favorite parts of a U.S. Championships weekend is getting to connect with our followers, readers, listeners, viewers and supporters IRL. We’ll be hosting two group runs with New Balance on Saturday and Sunday morning at 8 a.m. PT.

📍 We’ll meet in front of Agate Alley on 1461 E. 19th Avenue and head out for some easy miles along Pre’s Trail. Steeplechase legend Emma Coburn will be jogging with us.

👟 You’ll have the opportunity to test and demo the new FuelCell Rebel v5 and FuelCell SuperComp Elite v5.

️ ☕️ There will be coffee and treats after the run.

 We’ll have some FREE “I ♥️ Track and Field” shirts on hand to give away.

Come for a good time and hit us with some of your hot takes and predictions on all of the action taking place. 🫡

Compiled by David Melly and Paul Snyder

Five Biggest Questions On Fans’ Minds Heading Into USAs 💭

All around the world, it’s nationals weekend, with countries from Bulgaria to Great Britain holding their selection events for the 2025 World Athletics Championships. But this newsletter is written in the U.S. of A., baby—and more importantly, no other nationals in the world features a staggering thirteen reigning World/Olympic champs all competing in the same place at the same time.

USAs is consistently the best non-global championship meet in the world each year. NCAAs may be a better entertainment product, and the Prefontaine Classic has the numbers to claim best one-day event status, but the four-day version of the USATF Outdoor Championships truly brings the best of both worlds when it comes to talent, depth, and a densely-packed schedule.

The CITIUS MAG team is churning out detailed previews for every event in your inboxes and on the site (safe to say we’re the only media game in town with a 5,000-word preview for just the throws), but if you don’t have time for all that reading or you’re more of a vibes-based fan, we’ve boiled things down to the burning questions on everyone’s mind heading into the weekend.

Who’s running what and why?

Obviously, that’s a pretty basic question—but the answer isn’t as straightforward as one might think. Unlike the Olympics, reigning World champions get a bye into Tokyo, so the lucky few gold medalists (okay, not so few in the U.S., and not so lucky in general) get to play around with their championship schedule. While they’ve entered both events, it’s possible that 100m champs Noah Lyles and Sha’Carri Richardson run only the 200m—a no-brainer for Lyles as he races his way back to sharpness, but an uphill battle for Sha’Carri as she faces Olympic champ Gabby Thomas, bronze medalist Brittany Brown, and three other women who’ve run under 22 seconds this year.

As the three-time World champ, Grant Holloway can run as many or as few 110m hurdles races as he wants. And he skipped the final in both 2022 and 2023, so don’t put all your chips on Holloway to get through all three rounds. At least he’s entered: World champ Ryan Crouser has committed to defending his title in Tokyo, but is skipping USAs entirely as he works his way back from an early-season injury.

The women’s 5000m will be made much more interesting by the folks who’ve gone all-in, namely Josette Andrews, Shelby Houlihan, and Alicia Monson. Monson is a real wild card as she’s only run one race, a 15:01.63 two weeks ago, since undergoing surgery in 2024. But as Andrews and Houlihan have both prioritized the 5000m over the 1500m, they’ll be racing on fresher legs than the Olympian trio of Elise Cranny, Karissa Schweizer, and Weini Kelati doubling back from the 10,000m. On the men’s 5000m side, the favorites are nearly all double-entered— Grant Fisher, Nico Young, Graham Blanks, and Cole Hocker, the latter of whom is coming back from the 1500m rather than the 10,000m. But if Abdi Nur was dogging his injury return (a 13:34 B-heat win at the same meet as Monson) he’ll be fresh and flying under the radar.

Just how low can Sydney go?

Guess who’s not doubling: Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. The world record holder and three-time World/Olympic champ over 400m hurdles is only running the flat 400m, looking to improve upon her performance from 2023 when she won the U.S. title in 48.74, just 0.04 seconds off Sanya Richards-Ross’s American record. McLaughlin-Levrone doesn’t have a bye in to Tokyo in any event, so it’s clear she’s not messing around. She certainly deserves kudos for taking the more difficult route to gold, one that necessarily goes through Olympic champ Marileidy Paulino.

McLaughlin-Levrone has raced three 400ms this year but her season’s best is “only” 49.43. She’s certainly capable of the American record—whether it happens this weekend or in Tokyo is another question. And although SML has to be considered the heavy favorite given her consistency and high ceiling, two other Americans—NCAA outdoor champ Aaliyah Butler and NCAA indoor champ Bella Whittaker—have run faster than her so far this season.

Will the 1500s be the best battles of the meet?

The Lap Count’s origins (and readership) has always had a distinctly middle-distance bent, so we may be a little biased, but the men’s and women’s 1500ms are truly stacked and ought to be thrillingly close.

Last year, the women’s final produced an astonishing eight finishers under four minutes, led by Nikki Hiltz picking up their fourth straight U.S. 1500m title (counting indoors) in 3:55.33. You’ve gotta feel for Sinclaire Johnson, who ran 3:56.75 and finished fourth—that’s truly insane. That time made her the sixth fastest American in history but three of those six finished ahead of her in the race.

Heading into the weekend, Johnson and Hiltz are the marquee names on a collision course. Hiltz extended their indoor/outdoor streak to five with a national title indoors, and was the top American finisher at the Prefontaine Classic one spot ahead of Johnson. Then last week, Johnson broke Hiltz’s American record in the mile, running 4:16.32 in London. And who was the last U.S. 1500m champion not named Nikki Hiltz? Sinclaire Johnson in 2022.

While they appear to be great chums off the track (Hiltz commented “Wouldn’t want my record to be broken by anyone else❤️🔥👏” after London), their rivalry will reach fierce new heights when they return to Hayward. And the battle for the third spot may be just as thrilling—former teammates Heather MacLean and Emily MacKay, 2021 and 2024 Olympians in the event, respectively, will be vying for a place on the team alongside MacLean’s new training partner Helen Schlachtenhaufen.

Not to be outdone, the men’s race is also shaping up to be a banger. Olympic medalists Cole Hocker and Yared Nuguse will match up for the seventh time this season (six Grand Slam 800m/1500ms plus the Bowerman Mile), and while Nuguse is 5-2 across those races, Hocker is the reigning national and Olympic champion for a reason. But Nuguse won the title in 2023, so this year’s edition is no foregone conclusion.

Olympic fifth-placer Hobbs Kessler was left out of the doubling section earlier because he isn’t, opting instead to focus on just the longer event after making the team in both the 800m and 1500m last year. He hasn’t quite shown off his 2024 form yet this year, but a singular focus and his preexisting prodigious talent put him in a good spot. And speaking of prodigious talent, Ethan Strand made 3:48 look absurdly easy out of the “International Mile” heat at Pre, and even though the 22-year-old just turned pro a few weeks ago, he made the final in North Carolina blue last year so is no stranger to a big stage. But he’ll have to turn the tables back around on collegiate rival Nathan Green, who hasn’t run quite as fast as his competition (yet) but is lethal in a championship setting. It’s tempting to call this a battle of youth vs experience, but Nuguse is the old man of the group at only 26.

What the heck is going on in the women’s 800m?

When this newsletter was going to press last week, we had to draft multiple versions of the Athing Mu-Nikolayev entry status, as the increasingly-inscrutable Olympic champion did not appear on the entry list for the women’s 800m until mere hours before the deadline. But she is running after all—how fast, and how many races, remains to be seen. On one hand, Mu-Nikolayev is the American record holder with a 1:54.97 PB; on the other, she’s only got a 2:00.42 season’s best to her name and faded badly in that race, moving from second to sixth in the final lap. It would be something of a surprise to see her flame out in the first round given her talent, but also would be unexpected for her to magically return to her 2022 form and handily dispatch the field. Her return to racing after falling in last year’s final will be one of the most intriguing plotlines of the entire meet and frankly… we don’t know quite what to expect.

She’s not the only X factor in the event, either. Four-time national champ Ajee’ Wilson also had a rough 2024 and is currently unsponsored after a decade or so in adidas, but she’s started to look like herself again this season, with a 1:58.76 season’s best and three wins in her last four races. Raevyn Rogers, Wilson and Mu-Nikolayev’s teammate in Tokyo, has also looked the best she’s looked in a while recently, running 1:58.49 for top American honors (albeit finishing sixth) at Pre.

On the other end of the spectrum, the current U.S. leader is 21-year-old Addy Wiley at 1:57.43, but Wiley has never made a team on the track and didn’t make the final of the 800m last year. The winner of that final, two-time defending champ Nia Akins, hasn’t quite been up to her usual standard of excellence outdoors, but she’s only a few months removed from winning the U.S. indoor title in the event. So what happens in this one is really anyone’s guess.

Is the easiest way to watch… flying to Eugene?

It’s famously expensive and onerous to travel to the American mecca of track and field… but this year, “expensive and onerous” could also describe simply getting the meet to play on your screen. Two of the four days of competition will only be streamed on USATF.TV, which requires a $12.99 monthly subscription, and Saturday and Sunday will feature a smorgasbord of USATF.TV, NBC, and Peacock coverage.

It’s hard enough to talk your friends, let alone the barkeep at the local watering hole, to put professional track and field on TV, and this schedule doesn’t make it any easier. Peacock is not a perfect service by any means (it also requires a subscription and its algorithm seems determined not to learn anything about its users), but when we’re searching for the remote in between couch cushions and untangling a mass of HDMI cables over the next four evenings, we’ll surely be missing the days when you could watch one meet on one platform.

The first year post-Olympics is always a time of change: top athletes changing sponsors and events, new talent coming up through the system, and beloved veterans riding off into the sunset. Change brings uncertainty, and uncertainty makes for very entertaining sports-viewing. Regardless of who you’re rooting for and how you jerry-rig your television, this year’s USAs is shaping up to be one of the most intriguing in recent memory.

Taking The Long Way To Tokyo 🛣️🗼

With all the fanfare around USAs and the straightforward wildcard entry given to defending World champions, there’s a backroad to Tokyo that’s scarcely discussed by American fans: the bye awarded to Diamond League champions.

In years past, the Diamond League Final has taken place after the World Championships. So winners of the DL Final got wildcard entries to the following year’s Worlds. But this year, with the global championship taking place in September—after the Diamond League final—the final stop on the DL circuit carries a whole lot more weight, because winners there get to go to Worlds. 

Presumably most athletes who win their event in Zurich will have already qualified for Worlds. But given the tremendous depth of talent in the U.S., that isn’t guaranteed to always be the case.

For instance, Olympic 400m champ Quincy Hall—a late scratch at Pre, citing an injury—is not entered for USAs at all. That means he’s definitively out for Tokyo, right? WRONG. Hall has earned enough points on the Diamond League circuit to currently find himself in the Diamond League Final. If he can sort out his injury and race once or twice more after USAs in order to secure his lane in the final, he can still rep Team USA by winning in Zurich in late August. 

In this scenario, there would be four American men racing the 400m at Worlds, despite one of them not contesting the national championship, and despite the 2023 World winner being Jamaica’s Antonio Watson. Even if Hall remains too banged up to race, were the Diamond League Final held today, Christopher Bailey, Jacory Patterson, and Vernon Norwood would all be in the field. Obviously, the preferred pathway for any athlete is the cleanest one: finish top three at USAs. But assuming these three men’s racing plans take them back to Europe after Eugene, they could totally crap the bed this weekend and keep the dream alive in Zurich.

The women’s 200m squad is shaping up to be one of the hardest to make in the entire meet. Gabby Thomas is the reigning Olympic champ and doesn’t look to have lost a step since Paris. Melissa Jefferson-Wooden has cemented herself as a bonafide 200m threat, and not just a 100m specialist. McKenzie Long and Jameesia Ford have each run under 22 seconds this season and come in ranked second and fourth in the world, respectively. 

Then there’s Anavia Battle, who has run just the 11th fastest time by an American this year, 22.27 with a slight tailwind. On paper, she shouldn’t even make the final at USAs. However, Battle has already secured her lane for the Diamond League Final, going a perfect four-for-four in Diamond League 200m action this year. This isn’t to say she doesn’t have a faster time in her legs, or that she won’t rise to the occasion at USAs—but it does look like Battle has been playing the long game all outdoor season, using the Diamond League circuit as some smart insurance for lining up in Tokyo.

There’s another way an athlete can hedge their bets at USAs by keeping a Zurich-emblazoned ace up their sleeve. Let’s look at Nico Young, who, unlike Battle, is heavily favored to finish top three. Hell, he’s got the second best seed time in the two events he’s entered! But the 10,000m comes first, and racing 25 laps around the track takes a toll on the body. The 5000m final is just three days later. Brutal stuff, especially if the pace is an honest one in the 10,000m.

As the outdoor American record-holder in the 5000m, surely Young likes his odds at contending for a global medal there. But if he isn’t feeling it on the starting line or simply is outrun by fresher 5000m specialists, that doesn’t mean his 12.5-lap dreams are done for. He could theoretically scrap the USAs 5000m and expand his post-10,000m recovery period from a few days to multiple weeks, if he thinks that gives him a better shot. By virtue of his 5000m DL win in Oslo, Young is currently ranked high enough to get an invite to the DL Final—where the 5000m qualifiers will race a 3000m. He’d need to nab a few more DL points at Silesia, Lausanne, or Brussels. But if he races in Zurich, he’s proven he has the closing ability to win Diamond League races.

Maximalist readers are likely asking their screen right now “wait, so can a country send five athletes in one event if they have the World champ, the DL champ, and three more studs in on ranking or standard?” 

In a word: no. There is a hard cap of four athletes per event, per country. Historically, when given the option USATF always fills its fourth spots with the World champ and top-three non-World champ finishers from USAs.

That’s tough stuff for an athlete like Courtney Lindsey, whose best event is the 200m—where the U.S. lays claim to the defending World champ: Noah Lyles. Thanks to a string of solid showings on the circuit, Lindsey has already earned his lane in the 200m in Zurich. He could break the tape and emerge as DL champion, but if he didn’t finish top three at the U.S. champs (or top four assuming Lyles is in the mix), he’ll be hoping he gets the nod for relay duty come Tokyo.

And finally, there’s one factor we haven’t accounted for when discussing the Diamond League wildcard: friendship. Suppose the top four finishers in the men’s 5000m at USAs are: Grant Fisher, Nico Young, Cole Hocker, then Cooper Teare. In this extremely presumptuous scenario, Hocker could opt for a mini-Euro trip to place in two remaining Diamond League 5000m races, qualify for the final, which, remember is a 3000m, and win it (he’s run the second fastest indoor 3000m ever and has an all-time great kick!), thus ensuring he gets to line up next to his pal and training partner Teare in Tokyo. It’s not likely, but it is possible.

Some of these hypotheticals are more likely than others, but one thing’s for sure. You’re going to want to tune into the Zurich Diamond League Final just in case.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– It’s a tradition like no other: Chris entered an arithmetic trance and went wild crunching the numbers on what it’ll take for various American women to qualify for Worlds in the 10,000m.

– In notable U.S. Championship scratches and non-entries, Olympic 400m champ Quincy Hall did not put his name in. There’s no Ryan Crouser on the entry sheets either, but as a reigning World champ under a revised USATF policy, he gets to exercise his bye and throw in Tokyo without having to contest USAs.

– Joshua Cheptegei is giving the marathon a third try in Amsterdam on October 19th. Far be it from us to say his current 2:05:59 PB is underwhelming, but when you’re the fastest person ever over 5000m and 10,000m, well, the omniscient third-person voice behind this newsletter is hoping for something faster.

– Japanese 16-year-old Sorato Shimizu posted a 10.00 100m at the inter-high school championship event, setting a new U18 world record. The video evidence? A blurry, vertically aligned YouTube Short of the race.

– Ethiopia has announced its World team—though eligible in the 1500m (duh), Gudaf Tsegay is opting for the 5000m-10,000m double.

– Hannah Borenstein wrote a fantastic feature for CITIUS MAG on rising Ethiopian distance star Biniam Mehary. As Mehary looks to make his a household name among fans of the sport, he’s not necessarily looking to become the next Bekele or Gebrselassie—he’s got plenty of inspiration within his own family. 

– Villanova standout and NCAA 1500m record holder Liam Murphy has signed a professional contract with Nike and will head to Flagstaff to represent with Swoosh TC under Mike Smith. The training partner trio that now includes Murphy, Parker Wolfe, and Ethan Strand could afford to have a snappy nickname, and after mere seconds of half-assed consideration, we propose “Lithan’s Wolfe Pack.” Hopefully somebody comes up with something better.

– Michael Johnsonshared his side of the Grand Slam Story with Front Office Sports’s Dennis Young. The long and short of it is that a primary—unnamed— investor backed out on their commitment, GST is working to secure new funding to pay athletes and vendors what they’re owed, and if that happens, gear up for another more measured run in 2026.

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