- World and Olympic and champion Haruka Kitaguchi defends her title in front of a home crowd
- Austria’s European champion Victoria Hudson heads the 2025 world list
- Serbia’s Adriana Vilagos, Norway’s Sigrid Borge and Greece’s Elina Tzengko arrive in Tokyo with season best form
Few athletes head to the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25 with the weight of expectation that Haruka Kitaguchi will be feeling.
The 27-year-old from Hokkaido has made history in recent years, becoming the first Japanese woman to win a senior global medal in a throwing discipline, taking bronze in 2022, followed by gold in 2023. As if that didn’t raise her profile enough, she went on to win Olympic gold in Paris in 2024, earning Japan’s only athletics title of the Games and becoming the first woman from her country to win an Olympic title in a field event.
Unsurprisingly, she is currently the best-known athlete on the host nation’s team heading into the World Championships, but she also enters the event carrying a right elbow injury.
After taking a break from competing for almost two months, she returned to action at the Diamond League meeting in Lausanne in late August and threw 50.93m. But she showed significant improvement at the recent Diamond League Final in Zurich, where she throw 60.72m – a solid step on the road back towards her season’s best of 64.63m, set when winning in Oslo before her injury.
Austria’s Victoria Hudson leads the 2025 world list followed by Serbia’s Adriana Vilagos, with both athletes having set national records this year.
Hudson’s throw of 67.76m at the European Team Championships in Maribor added almost two metres to her previous best. The 29-year-old won the European title in Rome last year, but then failed to make the final at the Olympic Games, so she’ll be keen to make amends in Tokyo.
Vilagos, who claimed European silver behind Hudson last year, has improved to 67.22m this year. The European U23 champion achieved a 62.96m second-place finish at the Diamond League Final, underlining her medal potential in Tokyo.
Greece’s Elina Tzengko won the Diamond League title with 64.57m, having also won in Rabat, Xiamen and Keqiao earlier in the season, each time throwing beyond 64 metres. Winner of the 2022 European title while still a teenager, the 23-year-old is now keen to win her first senior global title.
Norway’s Sigrid Borge sits one place ahead of Tzengko on this year’s world list with her season’s best of 65.66m, set in the same competition where Hudson produced her world-leading throw. The 29-year-old will be hopeful of making her first global championships final.
Colombia’s Flor Denis Ruiz was one of the surprise medallists of the last World Championships, coming away from Budapest with the silver medal after leading for most of the early stages of the final. She heads to Tokyo with a season’s best of 62.04m.
Jo-Ane Du Plesis is another surprise recent global medallist, taking Olympic silver last year. The South African has a best this season of 62.77m.
Australian hopes rest with 2023 bronze medallist Mackenzie Little and her teammate Lianna Davidson. Others to look out for include Uruguay’s Manuela Rotundo and Chinese duo Dai Qianqian and Su Lingdan.
Andjela Cegar for World Athletics