Budapest World Championships Tracking

Check out the Australian team for the World Championships in Budapest.

Cover image of Nicole Olyslagers (Steve Christo courtesy of Athletics Australia)

Countdown to 2023 World Championships

The qualifying period closed on 30 July, with the World Rankings released on 2 August being the final list for qualifying and Athletics Australia announcing their selections today.

Didn’t we just have a World Championships last year?

We are in the middle of an unprecedented period of five consecutive years of global championships, due to the COVID compressed calendar that delayed the Tokyo Olympics and pushed the Oregon World Championships in 2022. There won’t be a break on the global calendar until 2026, when the Commonwealth Games (if they go ahead, following the Victoria’s government’s cancellation of their March 2026 hosting) could take place.

Qualifying for Budapest was different to Tokyo or Oregon, with World Athletics updating its qualifying standards. The idea is that around half of the field in each event should qualify through these tougher qualifying standards, with the remaining athletes in each event being selected based on the World Athletics Rankings (quota positions).

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The World Athletics Rankings take an average of an athlete’s top performances (usually 5, but less for some less commonly contested events), which are evaluated based on the overall quality of performance (using a progressive points table system) and the finishing place, with placings in high standard competitions being more valuable.

Three athletes per country can be entered into each event (or four where an athlete from the country is eligible for a wildcard – such as the reigning World Champion or Diamond League Champion).

Australian athletes were very well served through the Australian domestic season. To borrow cricket terminology, the runs are already on the board. Generally the rankings of Australian athletes declined over the final two months of the qualifying period as other nation’s athletes built on their high ranking performance opportunities, including 28 national championships that took place on the final weekend.

And despite all of the above, there’s a number of athletes who finished outside of the quota positions who gained selection after other nation’s athletes within the quota declined selection. There’s some prominent examples of where this occurred, such as with the UK team, as well as individual circumstances where athletes are injured.

What will the Australian team look like?

67 athletes have been selected and the team has largely selected itself. The few examples where more athletes were qualified than positions available have ended up with:

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• Women’s 1500m: Jessica Hull was already selected (having won the Australian Championships and having the qualifying standard at the time), while national record holder Linden Hall and Commonwealth Games bronze medallist Abbey Caldwell fill the remaining spots. Qualified Georgia Griffiths and quota qualified Sarah Billings and Isabella Thornton-Bott are the athletes to miss out from the event where Australia has enormous depth currently (as an aside the World Record in the 4x1500m is 16:33.58, which the season best of any four of the six easily betters).
• Men’s Long Jump: The four quota positioned athletes have all been selected for entry, with Athletics Australia still to confirm who will appear on the entry lists. There’s not a lot separating Christopher Mitrevski, Darcy Roper, Liam Adock and Henry Frayne.

Women

Men