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World Athletics Championships 2023: The Best of Britain

Jasmine Collett
Runners at the 2017 Athletics World Championships at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford

Jasmine Collett

Team GB had a successful competition at the 2023 World Athletics Championships last week as they took home a spectacular amount of medals ahead of the Olympics next year in Paris.

Team GB won ten medals over the course of the nine-day event in Budapest, earning themselves a seventh-place finish in the medals table.

The performance equals Britain’s best-ever medal total at the World Championships as they won the same amount in Stuttgart in 1993.

Golden Moments

Two of the ten medals included gold, won by Katarina Johnson-Thompson and Josh Kerr at the Championships.

Back in love with the sport, Johnson-Thompson defended a narrow lead over American favourite, Anna Hall in an intense final 800m event to reclaim the heptathlon title she won in 2019.

The 30-year-old feared her career might be over when she pulled out of the heptathlon competition at Tokyo 2020 after pulling up with a calf injury during the 200m race.

https://twitter.com/JohnsonThompson/status/1423181943135428609

 

But the heptathlete has proved she is back and better than before with her 6740-point performance at Budapest.

Josh Kerr continued the success as he shocked the nation in the 1500m final, beating favourite Jakob Ingebrigsten to win his first-ever global title.

The 25-year-old, who won bronze at Tokyo 2020 said that his success has been “a long time coming.”

The middle-distance runner will face tough competition against teammate,  Jake Wightman, next year. Wightman, absent in 2023 because of injury, won the nation’s only gold last year as he also broke Norwegian, Ingebrigsten in the closing stages and hopes to return to his best next year.

https://twitter.com/BBCSport/status/1694430320475443609?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Podium Success

Other medals included Matthew Hudson-Smith who upgraded the bronze medal he won at last year’s competition, with a silver in the 400m. The athlete was only 0.09 seconds behind the Jamaican gold medal winner, Antonio Watson.

Zharnel Hughes achieved a bronze medal in the men’s 100m sprint and Ben Pattison, 21, won a shock bronze medal in the 800m — only three years after undergoing heart surgery.

GB’s Keely Hodkinson had to settle for silver in the women’s 800m final after she was beaten by Kenya’s Mary Moraa. Still searching for her first global title, Hodgkinson clocked one minute 56.34 seconds to match her 2022 medal.

Relay Greatness

Four of Britain’s medals were won in the relay races. Team GB won a silver in the mixed 4x400m relay, in which both men and women competed against each other. The women’s relay team also won bronze medals in the 4x100m and 4x400m relay races.

“We are so strong as a team and we’ve had such incredible words behind the scenes”

“We are so strong as a team and we’ve had such incredible words behind the scenes,” said Laviai Nielsen, Team GB relay racer, who ran the first leg of the relay.

In the 4x400m relay, Laviai Nielsen, Amber Anning, Ama Pipi and Nicole Yeargin earned a well-deserved bronze, but could not catch the Jamaicans who led for most of the way.

The Netherlands’s Femke Bol drove her team to gold as she flew past both teams at the final stretch. The Dutch athlete had started the championships with a theatrical fall in the final metres of the mixed relay but didn’t let this stop her.

The GB men won another bronze in the 4x400m men’s relay on the last night of the championships.

Primed for the Paris Olympics

After the success of the World Athletics Championships, Team GB are set to take “energy and momentum” into the Paris Olympics next year, according to Stephen Maguire, technical director at UK Athletics.

As well as the 2023 medallists, there are several athletes from Team GB who also have their sights on a medal.

In the field events, Morgan Lake who secured a fourth-place finish with a clearance at 1.97m in the high jump will be working towards the Olympics, as well as pole vaulter Molly Caudery who produced a personal best in the women’s pole vault this summer.

Jemma Reekie, who achieved a fifth-place finish in her first world 800m final, expects to face tough competition next year as she faces Hodginson and Moraa again.

Teammate Laura Muir will be aiming for an Olympic medal after placing sixth in the 1500m final following the most turbulent year of her career.

The Scot, 30, said she had prioritised her happiness after unexpectedly splitting with long-term coach Andy Young in March and, despite not being able to match her 2022 bronze, feels “excited for the future.”

Commonwealth 10,000m champion Eilish McColgan will also hope to be injury-free by next year.

“This sets us up really well to go to the Paris Olympics and to show we can really do it.”

The performance of the British athletes puts Team GB in a positive position ahead of the Paris Olympics next summer.

Stephen Maguire, technical director at UK Athletics, said: “This sets us up really well to go to the Paris Olympics and to show we can really do it.”

“The atmosphere has been inspiring and we’ve spurred each other on,” said GB silver medalist Keely Hodgkinson.

And as Johnson-Thompson added, “Hopefully in Paris, it’s more of the same.”

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Featured image courtesy of William Warby on Flickr. No changes were made to this image. Image license found here. 

I am an NCTJ student at News Associates in Manchester who is passionate about all things sports, lifestyle, entertainment and more!

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