Grant Holloway is bidding for a fourth straight world title
Cordell Tinch has been the form athlete this year after running the joint fifth-quickest time in history
Home hopes rest on the shoulders of Rachid Muratake, the second fastest man this season
You have to go all the way back to London in 2017 for the last time that Grant Holloway didn’t win the world title in the 110m hurdles.
And yet the Olympic champion has not quite been his dominant self this season, leaving him some way down the pecking order as things stand ahead of the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25.
But his rivals would be warned to write off the US athlete at their peril, such are his championship credentials.
While he has struggled, others have shone – the top eight on the entry list either setting or matching their personal bests so far this season.
Of those, Holloway’s compatriot Cordell Tinch has undeniably been the class act. Signed to a football scholarship initially at college in the United States, by his own admission he struggled with the weight room so sought out a sport he thought needed less of that.
He found himself in track and field where he excelled in three disciplines: the sprint hurdles, the high jump and the long jump. He has PBs of 2.21m in the high jump and 8.16m in the long jump to show he was no slouch in those.
But judging by his form this season, he was right to focus on the 110m hurdles, and he ran the joint fifth-fastest time in history in China back in May, a time of 12.87.
To show it was no fluke and prove he has maintained that form, he then clocked 12.92 in his last race prior to Tokyo, winning the Diamond League Final in Zurich and matching a 36-year-old meeting record.
He looks the likeliest contender to deny Holloway a fourth straight world title, and yet Japan can have very realistic ambitions for a home gold in the event.
Like Tinch, Rachid Muratake – a finalist at last year’s Olympics – is hitting his strides at just the right time, having run a Japanese record of 12.92 just last month, putting him joint 11th on the world all-time list.
There is a third sub-13-second man in the field in France’s Just Kwaou-Mathey, who became only the fifth European athlete in history to dip below that barrier when he achieved the feat at the French Championships in Talence at the start of August. All of the other athletes on that sub-13.00 list have gone on to become either world or European champion.
His compatriot Sasha Zhoya was second to him in that Talence race and will have his sights set firmly on a first senior major championship medal.
Going into the championships, there are no shortage of protagonists. There is genuine excitement about Ja’kobe Tharp, the 19-year-old revelation who pipped Tinch to win the US title.
Dylan Beard, in third place in that race, has a wealth of experience on the track and has shone since focusing full time on athletics. Last year, he was still working on the deli counter at his local Walmart. Switzerland’s Jason Joseph has improved his own national record to 13.07 this season and won the Diamond League meeting in Rome.
Matt Majendie for World Athletics
AloJapan.com