Thursday in Nanjing: LRC Has Boots on the Ground at World Indoors

NANJING, China — Made it! After a 28-hour travel day (which came just one day after I had to travel from Boston to NYC  and back to get my press visa), I’m in Nanjing and ready for the 2025 World Athletics Indoor Championships, which kick off on Friday (late Thursday night in the US). Earlier this week, I took a deep dive into the men’s and women’s distance events at Worlds. This last pre-meet article will focus on a couple observations from my first day in China as well as a look at a few other athletes and events I haven’t previewed so far.

It’s warm here — which should make warmups easier

During an indoor track meet, warmup space is at a premium. But things are a little roomier in Nanjing: in addition to an indoor straightaway to practice on, athletes have a 400-meter outdoor track adjoining the indoor facility, just as you might have at an outdoor Worlds or Olympics. And thankfully for the athletes, the weather is going to be very pleasant this weekend, with highs of 76, 80, and 67 Fahrenheit from Friday through Sunday.

It’s the complete opposite of the 2018 World Indoors in Birmingham, where the “Beast from the East” storm produced snowy, slippery streets and forced athletes to warm up for their races by running loops around a cold parking garage.

The stadium is very intimate and could feature a great atmosphere

The host venue, Nanjing’s Cube, is part of the larger Nanjing Youth Olympic Sports Park, which hosted the 2014 Youth Olympics. The crown jewel of that complex is a 61,000-seat stadium which features a 400-meter track.

But this meet will be at the Cube, which is much smaller. The good news is that the organizers should be able to sell out this edition of the World Indoors. The bad news is there aren’t a ton of seats to sell. Here’s a look inside.

The photo above doesn’t quite show everything, as there is another section of around 250 seats on the upper level that you can’t see. Here’s a look from the start of the straightaway on the same side of the track, this time showing those extra seats (the far end up top is for media).

Either way, it’s not a ton. This article claims the arena can accommodate up to 3,200 spectators, and I did a rough count of the actual number of seats in the arena and came up with around 2,725 — and that includes around 475 seats for athletes/coaches/VIPs.

Here’s hoping that those who do show up bring the energy. One of the beauties of indoors is you don’t need a huge number of people to have a great crowd at an indoor track meet.

World Athletics CEO Jon Ridgeon speaks on San Diego losing World Road Champs

Two weeks ago, World Athletics announced that the 2025 World Road Running Championships would be moved away from San Diego, who was initially meant to host the meet in September. It marked the second time in 18 months WA had made the decision to relocate a meet after the local organizing committee (LOC) failed to make enough progress as 2024 World Cross Country was also relocated. That meet went from the Croatian cities of Medulin and Pula to the Serbian capital of Belgrade.

World Athletics president Sebastian Coe usually does these press conferences, but today he allowed WA CEO Jon Ridgeon to deputize (perhaps because Coe was awaiting the results of the IOC’s presidential election — something he has been campaigning for hard in recent weeks). So I asked Ridgeon how concerned he was about the relocations (so far, no date or location has been announced to replace San Diego) and whether World Athletics needed to change anything in terms of the demands it makes of a host.

“It’s really important to us to stage events all around the world, which we do,” Ridgeon said (San Diego would have been the first time the US hosted that event). “But that makes it challenging, because sometimes the environments you go to are not as experienced, are more challenged in terms of staging those events than others.”

Indeed, some countries and local governments are able to offer much bigger guarantees when it comes to hosting events. That may have been one of the reasons Beijing was awarded the 2027 World Championships over Rome, where the Italian government did not guarantee the $92 million necessary to host the meet.

“Yeah, we have had two events that we’ve, at relatively late notice, had to move,” Ridgeon said. “Of course, you learn all the time. You learn in terms of how to best monitor LOCs as they develop. But I think what’s so positive is we have a really, really strong pipeline of cities that want to stage our championships.

“I’d prefer it didn’t happen at all. But it’s not happening all time. The good thing is, we’re always able to find a host. But we need to make sure that in future when we do assess bids, that we do even more due diligence and we help those bids along the way even more.”

Grant Holloway looks to extend the greatest win streak in track & field

The argument over the greatest 60-meter hurdler in history is settled. Grant Holloway has the four fastest times in history (and eight of the top nine), two World Indoor titles, three NCAA Indoor titles, and precisely zero defeats over the senior 42-inch barriers. And he hasn’t lost any hurdles race indoors in more than 11 years — a win streak so long that even mainstream publications like the Wall Street Journal are starting to pick up on it.

Usually when one guy is miles better than everyone else, the event becomes less interesting. But because of Holloway’s win streak, the 60m hurdles is must-watch at any meet he enters. Because any race could be the race where it ends. And the margin of error is tiny in the event (which makes Holloway’s streak all the more impressive).

Currently, Holloway’s win streak stands at 69 straight over the senior barriers (counting prelims). All three rounds of the 60m are on Saturday in Nanjing (due to the time difference, the prelims are on Friday night in the US). I know I’ll be watching to see if Holloway can improve to 72-0.

Mondo world record watch

Speaking of greatness, Mondo Duplantis is entered in the pole vault, which means we are on world record watch again. Duplantis has already broken the WR once this year — he cleared 6.27m in France on February 28 — and has a knack for breaking the world record in global championships. Of his last eight world records (out of 11 total), three have come at global championships: 2022 World Indoors in Belgrade, 2022 World Outdoors in Eugene, and the 2024 Olympics in Paris.

Can an Australian man win a sprint medal?

Here are the top 10 entries for the 60 meters at World Indoors. Notice anything different about them?

Sure seems like Oceania is having a good year, right? Australian Lachlan Kennedy‘s 6.43 sb puts him well ahead of the field. New Zealand’s Tiaan Whelpton is tied for the #3 seed at 6.50, while another Aussie, Joshua Azzopardi, is tied for seventh.

You may have also noticed the letter “o” next to their names. That means those performances were achieved outdoors. A couple of years ago, World Athletics made a push to move away from splitting track between indoors/outdoors and toward splitting it between short track/long track. The idea was that by rebranding as “short track,” meet organizers could come up with more creative places to put indoor tracks than inside some convention center or sports arena. And countries with little indoor history — such as Australia, which doesn’t have an indoor track in the entire country — could hold their own equivalent of an indoor championship.

Australia hasn’t sent a man to World Indoors in the 60 since 2001, and it’s understandable why. Australia isn’t a huge sprint nation to begin with, and it’s a tough sell traveling from the Australian summer to the northern hemisphere winter to chase a qualifying mark for a six-second race.

But things are changing. On February 1, Australia held its first-ever Short Track Championships in Sydney. And this year, it will have not one, but two entrants at World Indoors.

Their entry times are a bit misleading as they benefited from a +1.6 tailwind (Jonas Mureika‘s sprint conversion calculator says Kennedy’s 6.43 was worth 6.48 in still conditions). But Kennedy also just ran 10.03 (+1.1) for the 100 on March 1 in Perth. He’s fit. He would be the first Aussie man to medal in a sprint event at any global championships since the 4×400 relay took bronze at the 2009 outdoor Worlds. For an individual men’s sprint medal, you’d have to go back another 16 years to 1993, when Damien Marsh (200) and Darren Clark (400) both medalled at World Indoors in Toronto.

Even World Athletics doesn’t appear completely sold on the “short track” phrasing — the official name of the meet remains the World Athletics Indoor Championships. But the push to open up the sport (and slightly shorter travel to Asia) means we could see Aussie sprinters making noise in Nanjing. Or it could turn out that the wind helps in the 60 more than we thought.

The 400 is struggling for popularity in Nanjing

The target field size for the women’s 400 meters at World Indoors is 30. But only 14 women will be lining up for the event in Nanjing. That is an insanely small field for a global track championship.

That said, the quality is still quite good. Bella Whittaker, fresh off a 49.24 American record (#2 all-time) at NCAAs last week for Arkansas, will not be running. But the field features three Olympic finalists from last year — American Alexis Holmes (50.51 sb), Great Britain’s Amber Anning (50.57), and European silver medalist Henriette Jaeger of Norway (50.44 sb).

Fourteen women sounds a lot compared to the relay, however. Only five countries have entered a team: the USA, Poland, Australia, India, and host China. No prelims necessary this time — everyone makes the final automatically.

The men’s 400 is a more popular event, with 30 entrants, but the men’s 4×400 also only has five countries entered: the USA, Hungary, Jamaica, Nigeria, and China.

It’s a bit surprising not to see the Netherlands entered given they are the most successful relay nation outside of the USA. Perhaps they’re still celebrating their relay sweep at Euros, where the Dutch won the men’s, women’s, and mixed 4×400 on home soil two weeks ago.