- World record-holder Mykolas Alekna could follow in champion father’s footsteps
- Daniel Stahl defends title after championship record-breaking win in Budapest
- Kristjan Ceh and Matthew Denny on hunt for more medals
Four of the top seven men’s discus throwers of all time will clash at the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25.
Mykolas Alekna, who improved his own world record to 75.56m in Ramona, is on the hunt for his first senior global title, Daniel Stahl defends the crown after his championship record-breaking win in Budapest, and major medallists Kristjan Ceh and Matthew Denny seek further podium places.
In a year of record depth, 11 men have surpassed 70 metres and nine of those athletes will be in Tokyo.
The list is topped by that 75.56m throw – a mark, achieved by Lithuania’s Alekna in April, that added more than a metre to his own world record. The Olympic silver medallist has thrown beyond 70 metres in five competitions since – including 72.15m on home soil last month – and he won the Diamond League title in his final competition before Tokyo.
Should he find that sort of form in the Japanese capital and improve on his world silver from 2022 and world bronze from 2023, Alekna would follow in the footsteps of his father Virgilijus, who won two world titles in 2003 and 2005.
Martynas Alekna – the older brother of Mykolas – will also be competing, and they will be joined on the Lithuanian team by Andrius Gudzius, the 2017 world champion.
Second on both this season’s top list and the world all-time list is Denny, who aims to become Australia’s first men’s world discus medallist. The Olympic bronze medallist surpassed Alekna’s previous world record mark when finishing second to the Lithuanian athlete in Ramona, throwing 74.78m, and he recorded 70.52m when finishing runner-up to Slovenia’s 2022 world champion Ceh in Turku in June.
Ceh has achieved the best throw of the year outside of Ramona, setting a national record of 72.36m on home soil in May to strengthen his position at sixth on the world all-time list. That was the third competition within a week in which the 26-year-old surpassed 72 metres. Ceh has finished in the top three in all of his 17 competitions this year, including a win in the Diamond League meeting in Stockholm and a runner-up finish to Alekna in the Diamond League Final.
He secured silver behind Stahl at the last edition of the World Championships in Budapest – the first major championship discus final in which two athletes had surpassed 70 metres.
Sweden’s Stahl, who won the Olympic title in Tokyo in 2021, added his world title win in Budapest to his world gold from Doha in 2019. This year he has thrown a best of 70.19m and his results include top three finishes at the Diamond League meetings in Doha, Stockholm and Oregon.
Like Alekna and Denny, Jamaica’s Ralford Mullings, USA’s Sam Mattis and Great Britain’s Lawrence Okoye also moved up the all-time list with their performances in Ramona, as they threw 72.01m, 71.27m and 70.76m, respectively. They sit fourth, fifth and sixth on the entry list.
Mullings won the Diamond League meeting in Brussels and was second in Eugene, and he is joined on the Jamaican team by Fedrick Dacres who beat Mattis to the NACAC title last month. Their Jamaican compatriot Roje Stona, who won the Olympic title last year in Paris, has opted not to compete in Tokyo.
Jess Whittington for World Athletics