The rising stars of 2024

Usually, I start my selection of the year's best athletes with the senior ones. But I had noticed in the previous years that ,when it came to the choice of the rising stars, I hadn't been paying sufficient attention and I struggled to establish my list. So, as I did last year, I decided to keep an eye open for the young and upcoming athletes and as a result I am again presenting a post focusing exclusively on the new talents. 

While the rising stars are, in principle, athletes still in their teens, I am always ready to make an exception for somebody who is just 20 years old. This is the case for E. Wanyonyi who was second last year behind L. Tebogo. He is my number one for this year. He has won the 800 m in the Olympics and shares, with W. Kipketer, the second place in the all-time list of the distance, with a 1:41.11 performance, at just 0.2 s from the world record. 

I hesitated a little bit for the remaining places but in the end it's M. Furlani who figures in second place. He had en excellent year winning silver in the Europeans (with a 8.38 m long jump world U20 record) and bronze in the Olympics.

B. Mehary finished 6th in the 5000 m final in the Paris Olympics but, during the Kenyan Trials, had broken the 10000 m world U20 record with 26:37.93 (he is now fifteenth in the all-time list for the distance) but, finishing 4th in the longer distance, he could not make the national team.

Q. Wilson would have been among the first three were it not for his catastrophic performance in the Olympic 4x400 m relay. He came in Paris, at just 16 years of age, with a 44.20 s personal best in the 400 m (world U18 best performance) but ran a 47.27 s first relay leg, and Norwood had to surpass himself in order to get the US into the final. Thanks to the US team winning the final, Wilson became the youngest athletics Olympic gold medalist in history.

I will complement my list of rising stars with cypriot hammer thrower I. Kesidis. He won the World U20 2024 title throwing 82.80 m, more than 7 metres beyond the silver medalist.

For the women's list my preference goes to L.G. Manuel (one cannot guess from her name that she is an athlete from Czechia, but her father is from Angola, and this explains that). I noticed her at the Rome, 2024, Europeans where she qualified easily for the 400 m final in which, with 50.52 s, she finished fourth behind Kaczmarek, Adeleke and Klaver. She reached the semi-final in the Olympics and then went to Lima for the world U20 championships winning gold (just as she had done in the 2023 U20 Europeans).

Topic competes  also in the long jump (albeit with less success)

A. Topic was my 2023 female rising star. This year she is in second position but she is always my preferred athlete. In 2924 she was unlucky, injuring herself during the warm-up of the high-jump in the Paris Olympics. Still she competed in the qualifiers and managed to make the final, but had to withdraw. With the bronze medal being adjudicated at just 1.95 m, Topic, who had jumped 1.98 m a few weeks before the Olympics, had serious chances for a place on the podium. Less than one month after her injury in Paris, Topic participated in the World U20 Championships and won the gold medal.

Ph. Gill won the british national 800 m title with 1:57.86 at just 17 years of age. She has now the European U18 record for the distance. She did not participate in the Europeans due to school exams but went to the Olympics, where she reached the semi-final. It would have been interesting to see Gill running together with S. Moraa in the World U20 Championships, but the former did not pursue her season after the Olympics. Sarah Moraa (a cousin of world champion over the same 800 m distance Mary Moraa) did win the U20 title and thus figures by right in my 2024 rising star list.

I will complete the list of female rising stars with M. Eisa who, after finishing 7th in the 5000 m at the Olympics, went on to win gold over the same distance in World U20 Championships (just as she had done two years before). 

A. Vilagos won the European Rising Star title. She was my choice as number one rising star already in 2022. She is an athlete I am always following closely.

Before concluding this article it is interesting to mention a new award that aims at honouring the best performing male and female U23 athletes at the Diamond League Final. It is called the Jesse Owens Rising Star Award and has the support of the Jesse Owens Foundation. (J. Owens was just 23 years old when he won four gold medals at the Berlin, 1936, Olympics). The first recipients of the Jesse Owens award are L. Tebogo and D. Welteji. Tebogo was the olympic champion over 200 m while Welteji was fourth in the 1500 m final. She has also three Diamond League victories (two over 1500 m and one in the 3000 m) but in the Diamond League final she could only finish second behind the great F. Kipyegon.

The World Athletics choice for 2024 Athlete of the Year

This year World Athletics decided to surprise us by nominating not just 10 candidates  (10 women and 10 men, that is) for the title of the Athlete of the Year. In fact, instead of presenting a list where all disciplines are mixed they started by presenting the list of nominees for Field events, followed by that for Track and later by the  ones dubbed "Out of Stadium".  Given the way they have formulated the presentation of the nominees, we can expect an Athlete of the Year trophy for each of the three specialties. 

Here is the list of the Field athletes 

Valarie Allman
Tara Davis-Woodhall
Nina Kennedy
Yaroslava Mahuchikh
Nafissatou Thiam
Ryan Crouser
Jordan Alejandro Diaz Fortun
Mondo Duplantis
Ethan Katzberg
Miltiadis Tentoglou

All 10 field nominees figure in my list of 13 best (but some of my list like Tamberi and LaFond do,not figure among the World Athletics nominees).

Curiously, for the Track nominees, World Athletics presented a list of 6+6.

Julien Alfred
Beatrice Chebet
Faith Kipyegon
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone
Marileidy Paulino
Gabby Thomas
Rai Benjamin
Grant Holloway
Jakob Ingebrigtsen
Noah Lyles
Letsile Tebogo
Emmanuel Wanyonyi

G. Thomas is not part of my list but only barely so. In fact I am mentioning her when I write about J. Alfred. In the case of the men's list two names are absent from mine: N. Lyles and E. Wanyonyi. For Lyles the reason I had not included him has to do with the excess of hype before the Games. Nobody was talking about anything else but Lyles, so I got fed up. Wanyonyi was left out of my list for a different reason, but revealing it would be a spoiler for a near-future post, so I'll pass. K. Hodgkinson of my list is not among the WA nominees but she figures among the finalists for the European title.

I felt that it would be too long to wait till WA published their "out of stadium" list, where there will certainly figure olympic champion S. Hassan and world record holder R. Chepngetich. So, I decided to publish this post right after the track and field lists of World Athletics were made public and will, if necessary, add a postscriptum once the "out of stadium" nominees are known. 

PS. World Athletics published the list of the ten best "out of stadium" athletes. As expected Hassan and Chepngetich are part of this list as well as olympic Marathon winner T. Tola and World Cross Country Championships winner J. Kiplimo. Y. Kejelcha was probably a last minute addition, since he broke the world record of the half-marathon just one day before the publication of the lists.

The year's best athletes

With the Olympic Games offering an extra incentive to athletes, 2024 year was exceptional in performances. So it was difficult to trim my lists down to just 10 names. And it was extra difficult in the case of women to decide who would occupy the top spot. So I propose an unusual classification. There are two best athletes of the year, Faith Kipyegon and Sydney McLaughlin. 

F. Kipyegon dominated the 1500 m like nobody else has ever done before. She established a world record with 3:49.04, better than the men's 1930 record of Jules Ladoumegue. And while she lost the 5000 m duel beaten by an impressive Chebet, she offered us (again) one of the best battles. 

S. McLaughlin won the olympic 400 m hurdles in an astounding 50.39 s, better than Lituyev's 1953(!) record. And she ran an incredible 47.7 s split in the 4x400 m relay. It would be great if she took a year to hunt for the 400 m flat world record. I am convinced that she can do it. 

And just as there are two athletes in first position I will also have two athletes in third, H. Thiam and S. Hassan. 

N. Thiam won her third straight olympic title in the heptathlon. With 6880 points she did only slightly better than in the Europeans where she had won with 6848 points, but had she jumped at her real potential she would have flirted with 7000 points.

S. Hassan attempted something that no other woman had dared do before, winning 5000, 10000 m and the Marathon. She had to contend herself with bronze medals in the two track events but won the Marathon in a gripping race, the issue of which was decided in the final sprint. I am really surprised that neither Thiam nor Hassan are among the finalists for the European Athlete of the Year trophy, while F. Bol makes the final trio, accompanied by Y. Machuchikh and K. Hodgkinson.

Past the three (well, four) year's best athletes I am giving the list of the remaining without a special ranking.

Y. Mahuchikh had probably badly timed her preparation, and peaked to soon. But, timing notwithstanding, she signed a new world record in high jump, improving with 2.10 m, the 37 years old record of S. Kostadinova.

If I had to choose one race from the whole olympic competition that would have been the women's 5000 m. All the more so, since last year's race at the World's was a breathtaking one. But this year B. Chebet took her vengeance winning ahead of Kipyegon and going on to win the 10000 m as well. 

After her indoor title I had great hopes for T. LaFond in the triple jump. And she delivered. She won the olympic title in great style and secured a place among my year's best. 

V. Allman is the only thrower to make my list. She had won olympic gold in the discus in Tokyo but then failed to win the world titles of '22 and '23. This year she was back with a vengeance winning a second olympic title.

M. Paulino has been dominating the 400 m for the last two years. She was second behind S. Miller-Uibo in Tokyo and again in Oregon, but she became number one last year in Budapest and in Paris added the olympic gold medal to her collection.

N. Kennedy shared the world pole vault title last year with K. Moon. This year she stood alone at the summit of her event. But with 4.90 m she does not have the leading performance this year. When are we going to see women over 5 m again?

J. Alfred was my favourite for the 100 m olympic title. And to tell the truth, for the 200 m as well, although I knew that she did not have the experience of G. Thomas over the distance. Be that as it may, she is the sprinter to follow in the coming years.

T. Davis-Woodhall added olympic gold to her world indoor title for the long jump. She is not just a great jumper. She has a personality that lightens up the field when she competes. And a great technician, something that I always appreciate.

I was waiting for a victory for K. Hodgkinson since the Tokyo Olympics. She had lost there (and again in Oregon) to A. Mu and when, in Budapest, Mu was not in top condition, she lost again to M. Moraa. Well this year she did it, winning the Olympic tile. And she is inching towards the haunted 40+ years old world record.

Turning to the men's year's best list my choice is none other but the one who topped the lists of the past two years: A. Duplantis. One cannot praise him enough. It is rare to have somebody dominate a discipline like he does (not even S. Bubka, despite his six world titles: his larger winning margin never exceeded 10 cm). He is definitely the best pole vaulter of all times.

R. Crouser occupies second place. While he does lose a competition from time to time and his world record is "only" 33 cm better than J. Kovacs' best, Crouser is the thrower who has revolutionised men's shot put.

M. Tentoglou occupies the third place on the podium. Although I was expecting a great jump from him this year, a jump that did not arrive (his 8.65 m in the Europeans is way below his capability) he is still the best long jumper of the last few years. And he shares with Duplantis and Ingebrigtsen a place among the finalists for the European Athlete of the Year trophy.

Speaking of J. Ingebrigtsen, I am including him in my year's best list despite the fact that he lost once more the 1500 m title. Breaking D. Komen's 3000 m record would have suffice in order to secure him a place among the best. I know that Ingebrigtsen wishes to break the 1500 m world record and I think that he is capable of doing this. However I have a crazy idea. When he started his career he was running the 3000 m steeple. And his technique over the hurdles and the river is not bad at all. So it would be interesting if he could take one year to go back to the steeple and bring the world record down to 7:45.

G. Tamberi missed out in the Olympics due to health reasons. But what he did in the Europeans would have been enough to get him a place among the year's best. It's such a pity that he was injured back in 2016 and lost precious years. He would have been the one to threaten Sotomayor's high jump record. 

The 10000 m is usually a race I follow out of the corner of my eye. Well not this year's olympic race. I was following J. Cheptegei, from the very beginning till the end. His race was one of the cleverest I have ever seen. The ethiopians did not have a chance this time and Cheptegei obtained in Paris the title that was missing in his collection.

E. Katzberg is just 22 years old. For a hammer thrower this is kindergarten age. And he is already olympic and world champion. His personal best of 84.38 m is among the best  performances of the 21st century. All of a sudden Sedykh's world record does look out-of-this-world any more.

Speaking about world records, it's the 74.35 discus world record of M. Alekna that obtained him a place among my year's best. That and his short-lived olympic record where he succeeded his father, Virgilijus, who had won the event in Athens in 2004. (Of course the olympic record was not registered in the end of the day, since Alekna lost the title to R. Stona for 3 cm).

J. Diaz-Fortún started by winning the European title (in a memorable fight with P. Pichardo) and went on to add the Olympic one. He is now the third triple jump performer of all times with his 18.18 m jump in Rome.

L. Tebogo was my rising star number one last year. And he confirmed the expectations winning the olympic 200 m final. He is now the fifth performer of all times over the distance. And he ran a great 43.03 s split in the 4x400 m relay. Given that he has the world best performance over 300 m, with 30.69 s, I wouldn't be surprised if, moving to the 400 m, he was the first to run under 43 seconds.

I reserve a place in my list for the hurdler duo G. Holloway and R. Benjamin. The former is the best technician over the high hurdles (but also a 8+ m long jumper) while the latter brought back home two gold medals from Paris, with a 46.46 s in the 400 m hurdles and the 4x400 m relay, which he anchored in 43.13 s.

The last entry in my year's best list is A. Nadeem. He won the javelin throw in the olympics with 92.97 m which makes him the 6th performer of all times. The only one ahead of him among still active throwers is A. Peters. (Well, this is not quite true. J. Vetter, 2017 world champion and with 97.76 m second thrower of all times is stil active. But his injuries are not allowing him to go back to his previous level: he was 6th in the national championships with a 73.16 m throw).

As every year I try to publish my list just ahead of World Athletics. As you have certainly noticed WA and myself do not see eye to eye when it comes to the choice of the year's best. It will be interesting to see who they are going to choose this year (but I expect serious divergences in the men's list). I will definitely follow this and report with details.