2023 European Athletics Indoor Championships preview: Seven stars to watch in Istanbul
Istanbul will host the 2023 edition of the European Athletics Indoor Championships, with the competition taking place from 3-5 March. From Olympic 100m gold medallist Marcell Jacobs to new 400m indoor world record holder Femke Bol, here are seven stars you won’t want to miss in Turkey.
Athletics
The greatest athletes on the European continent are getting ready to fight for gold at the European Athletics Indoor Championships.
More than 600 athletes from 51 nations will look to run, jump or throw their way to success from 3-5 March at the Atokoy Arena in Istanbul. Here are seven stars that you’ll want to keep a close eye on this weekend in Turkey.
Stars to watch at the 2023 European Athletics Indoor Championships
1 - Marcell Jacobs, Italy, men’s 60m
It’s a big year for Olympic 100m champion Marcell Jacobs, who will be looking to put the injuries that saw him pull out of the 2022 World Athletics Championships behind him with less than a year and a half until Paris 2024.
Jacobs enters the 60m race in Istanbul as the reigning champion after victory in Torun in 2021. He also holds the Olympic (100m), World Indoor (60m) and European outdoor titles (100m) and will begin his campaign in Turkey as the favourite to retain the indoor gold.
Things haven’t gone 100 per cent to plan for Jacobs in recent weeks, with a loss to Kenya’s Ferdinand Omanyala on 15 February in Lievin followed by a shock defeat in the Italian championships as 22-year-old Samuele Ceccarelli came out on top over the 60m distance.
Ceccarelli will once again be competing in Istanbul, as will Great Britain’s Reece Prescod whose personal best of 6.49 is eight-hundredths of a second slower than Jacobs’ best of 6.41.
2 - Femke Bol, Netherlands, women’s 400m
Dutch star Femke Bol has been enjoying a stellar indoor season so far with the highlight being her demolition of the women’s indoor 400m world record at the Dutch nationals on 19 February. Bol, who is best known as a 400m hurdler, passed the finish line in 49.26 seconds to beat Czech Jarmila Kratochvilova’s record of 49.59 that had stood since 1982.
Bol will once again race in the 400m flat in Istanbul and is the only woman in the field to have broken the 50-second barrier. Her closest rival is her teammate Lieke Klaver who holds a PB of 50.34.
At last year’s European Athletics Championships in Munich, Bol became the first woman in history to do the 400m/400m hurdles double at a major championship, before ending the meet by anchoring her team to gold in the 4x400m relay.
She will be an odds-on favourite in Istanbul and will be hoping to take her good form into an outdoor season that will most likely see her clash with 400m hurdles world record holder Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone in August’s World Athletics Championships in Budapest.
3 - Jakob Ingebrigsten, Norway, men’s 1500m/3000m
One athlete who could possibly have halted Jakob Ingebrigtsen’s assault on the 1500m/3000m double in Istanbul is Great Britain’s 1500m World Champion Jake Wightman. However, with Wightman sitting out the indoor season due to injury, it’s difficult to see where the challenge will come from for the Norwegian dynamo who is the reigning Olympic 1500m and world 5000m champion.
Ingebrigtsen is attempting to repeat his heroics from 2021 in Torun, where he won gold in both the Olympic 1500m event and the non-Olympic 3000m. He is also the reigning outdoor champion at both 1500m and 5000m.
Illness and injury mean Ingebrigtsen hasn’t raced much this season, but he still stormed to victory on 15 February in the 1500m in Lievin.
If anyone is to challenge him in Istanbul, it may be Great Britain’s Neil Gourley, who raced to a British record last week in Birmingham when he set a time of 3:32.48 at the World Indoor Tour finale in Birmingham.
Over the 3000m, watch out for Spain’s Adel Mechaal, the 2017 European indoor champion and 2021 bronze medallist His personal best of 7:30.82 is more than 18 seconds faster than Ingebrigsten’s.
4 - Malaika Mihambo, Germany, women’s long jump
The reigning Olympic and World Champion Malaika Mihambo will once again be favourite to win the women’s long jump title in Istanbul.
However, for someone with such a strong pedigree in her sport, the 29-year-old’s recent form at European level will give some of her competitors hope heading into these championships.
At the last European Indoor Championships, Ukraine’s Maryna Bekh-Romanchuk leapt 6.92m to take gold, with Mihambo settling for silver after a jump of 6.88m. Mihambo again came home second at the 2022 European outdoor championships where she was defeated by Serbia’s Ivana Vuleta.
Vuleta will be present at these championships in Istanbul, as will Great Britain’s Europan bronze medallist Jazmin Sawyers, who recently won her national championships.
5 - Karsten Warholm, Norway, men’s 400m
Norway’s 400m hurdles world record holder Karsten Warholm will be hoping to put an injury-blighted 2022 behind him in a year in which he will aim to win a third world title, having triumphed in London in 2017 and Doha in 2019.
At the 2022 edition of the Worlds in Eugene, Oregon, the 27-year-old couldn’t shake off a hamstring injury he picked up at last year’s Rabat Diamond League and only finished seventh in the final. But a month later he was once again on top of the podium after winning the 400m hurdles in the European Athletics Championships in Munich.
In Istanbul, Warholm will be running in the 400m flat where he holds a personal best of 45.05 - the fastest time of all the entrants.
His season’s best of 45.31 is close to three hundredths faster than Spain’s Oscar Husillos (45.58), who is likely to be his nearest challenger during the event.
6 - Keely Hodgkinson, Great Britain, women’s 800m
A week after breaking her own British indoor record, Keely Hodgkinson will be aiming for more honours in Istanbul.
The 20-year-old came home second to the USA’s Athing Mu in both the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and the Oregon World Championships but did claim her first gold medal in a major international competition when she won 800m gold at last year’s European Athletics Championships.
Having enjoyed an excellent indoor season, it will take something truly special for her to be beaten in Turkey. Her personal best of 1:57.18 is almost three seconds faster than anyone else in the field, and she is the only athlete heading to Istanbul to have ever broken the two-minute mark in an indoor 800m race.
7 - Nafissatou Thiam, Belgium, pentathlon
Belgium’s Nafi Thiam is out in a league of her own in her favoured heptathlon event, having won golds at the Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 Olympics, as well as world titles at London 2017 and Eugene 2022.
In Istanbul, she will be competing in the pentathlon - an event in which she is the reigning European Indoor champion (Torun 2021) having previously also won gold at Belgrade 2017.
However, one athlete in the field has a better personal best than her, with Belgian compatriot Noor Vidts leading the way on 4929 to Thiam’s 4904.
Still, it will take an immense effort to stop Thiam from claiming her third European indoor title, as the 28-year-old looks to put down a marker in the year of a World Championships and less than 18 months away from the next Olympic Games.