- Andy Diaz Hernandez seeking to add world outdoor gold to world indoor title
- Olympic champion Jordan Diaz targets second successive global gold
- In-form Jordan Scott and multiple medallists Pedro Pichardo and Hugues Fabrice Zango ready to challenge
Italy’s Andy Diaz Hernandez will seek to add gold at the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25 to the world indoor title he earned in Nanjing in March.
The portents could hardly be better for him, as the national record of 17.80m he set to win in China is comfortably the best mark of the year so far.
More recently, the 29-year-old won the Diamond League Final for a third time, jumping 17.56m in Zurich.
Diaz Hernandez will know, however, that he can take nothing for granted against a field stacked with major medallists – some highly experienced, some swiftly up-and-coming.
Diaz Hernandez took bronze at the Paris Olympics last year in a final won by the then 23-year-old Jordan Diaz, who won world U20 and Youth Olympic Games titles in 2018.
By way of a Paris 2024 warm-up, Jordan Diaz won the European title in Rome with 18.18m, which put him third on the world all-time list behind Great Britain’s Jonathan Edwards on 18.29m and USA’s Christian Taylor on 18.21m. That eclipsed the challenge of Pedro Pichardo, who set a Portuguese record of 18.04m.
Two months later in Paris, the Olympic final saw the two athletes occupying the same respective places.
At 32, Tokyo Olympic champion Pichardo is seeking to add another world medal to gold he won in 2022 and his silvers from 2013 and 2015.
Jordan Diaz has had a relatively quiet season so far and stands 15th on the world top list on 17.16m.
In contrast, multiple Jamaican champion Jordan Scott has been in the form of his life this season. He has won at four Diamond League meetings, setting personal bests in three of them as he registered 17.27m in Xiamen, 17.34m in Oslo and 17.52m in Monaco, and he currently stands joint third on the 2025 top list.
It is Melvin Raffin who shares that No.3 spot following the 17.52m PB he achieved at the French Championships last month. That mark added 32cm to his previous PB that was set indoors back in 2017 and will have been a big confidence boost from his final competition before heading to Tokyo.
Second place on the 2025 top list is occupied by China’s Wu Ruiting, ninth at the 2017 and 2019 World Championships, who produced a huge personal best of 17.68 in Quzhou last month.
Wu’s teammate Zhu Yaming – the Tokyo Olympic silver medallist, 2022 world bronze medallist and this year’s world indoor silver medallist – is joint eighth on the list with the mark of 17.37m he set in Quzhou.
The gold, silver and bronze medallists in Budapest – respectively Burkina Faso’s Hugues Fabrice Zango and Cuba’s Lazaro Martinez and Cristian Napoles – all return.
Like his contemporary Pichardo, Zango has been winning medals over a long span. Bronze medallist at the Tokyo Olympics, he completed his world medal set in Budapest having won bronze in 2019 and silver in 2022. This year he took world indoor bronze and he has a season’s best of 17.21m.
Martinez and Napoles have respective 2025 bests of 17.12m and 16.90m, but have personal bests of 17.64m and 17.40m.
Other contenders are Algeria’s Yasser Mohammed Triki, last year’s world indoor silver medallist, and Germany’s Max Hess.
USA’s three-time Olympic and four-time world medallist Will Claye, who also has two world indoor titles on his CV, will compete at his eighth consecutive edition of the World Athletics Championships.
Mike Rowbottom for World Athletics