World Athletics Indoor Championships Belgrade 2022: Preview, schedule and stars to watch

The World Athletics Indoor Championships Belgrade 2022 occupy a spicy niche in the calendar, taking place from 18-20 March. The recent Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 have left many athletes burdened by expectations. Others will be honing their form ahead of July’s World Athletics Championships Oregon22.

The World Indoor Championships may feature some fascinating face-offs. Jamaica's sprint legend Elaine Thompson-Herah has been outpaced by in-form Ewa Swoboda in several indoor meetings early this year in the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it 60m indoor event.

In the men’s 60m, Marcell Jacobs returns from a sparse schedule after his surprise Olympic gold in Tokyo. Belgrade may feature an electric showdown between the Italian and former world champion Christian Coleman.

Olympic pole vault champion Mondo Duplantis is chasing another world record as is Ethiopia's Gudaf Tsegay who has been trying to lower the women’s indoor mile world record in recent weeks, but was stymied by a fall in Liévin.

The World Indoor Championships will be the culmination of the 2022 World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold series. Those athletes scoring highest across the scoring disciplines (which rotate each year) in the seven tour meetings will gain wildcard entry to the World Championships.

Here’s your guide to the athletes to watch out for in Belgrade, plus the schedule.

Stars to watch

Poland's Swoboda edged Thompson-Herah on home soil in the sixth tour event in Toruń, Poland on 22 February. The margin was just a hundredth of a second, with Swoboda clocking 7.03. She has now posted four of the seven fastest times in the world this year.

Jamaican legend Thompson-Herah has won five Olympic gold medals, three of them in Tokyo. Yet her stated goal of a sub-seven-second 60m has eluded her this season. Her last sub-seven race was in 2017, when she ran 6.98.

Thompson-Herah has been struggling to improve her slow starts, while Swoboda’s motivation is not in doubt after she missed Tokyo 2020 through injury.

“I’m so very happy,” she said in Toruń.

“I still can’t believe that I raced against Elaine Thompson-Herah and that I won against her. It was a pleasure to compete with her. Wow.”

“Belgrade is going to be good, for sure.”

The men’s 60m offers an equally explosive prospect. The USA’s Christian Coleman, the 2019 100m world champion, returned from his doping ban in November last year. Meanwhile, Jacobs has won all four of his 60m events this year.

The men’s 60m hurdles is arguably in less doubt. The USA’s Grant Holloway hasn’t lost a 60m hurdles race since he was 16 in 2014. He has notched 50 victories in the past eight years, and is the indoor world record holder.

He won his race at the Liévin tour meet in 7.35 seconds, a time only ever bettered by Colin Jackson, Dayron Robles and Holloway himself.

“That was only the second race of the season so I am excited,” he said afterwards.

Duplantis is also looking close to unbeatable. At the Birmingham indoor tour event on 19 February, it seemed that a thinner vest would have sufficed to get him over the world-record height of 6.19.

“I will try for the world record every time I get the chance,” said Duplantis.

“I’m in good shape, so it feels like it could come at any time. It’s time for me to take 6.19m, but 6.20m feels like a bigger goal. It sounds nicer, too.

“It’s easier to jump indoors. The conditions are basically the same for every competition and there’s no wind to take into account.”

Duplantis cleared six metres 14 times between January and September 2021 – a record for six-metres vaults in one season.

Tsegay’s attempt on the world indoor mile record failed by a larger margin due to her fall, but that didn’t stop her getting up to win the race. She had been tilting at her own record in any case, set at the same meet a year previously.

She went on to run the second-fastest indoor 1500m ever in Toruń – again second only to herself.

Tsegay won bronze in Tokyo, where she surprisingly concentrated on the 5000m.

Her competition will come from a surprising quarter.

Fellow Ethiopian Dawit Seyaum was a world junior champion in 2014 and came second in the world indoor championships 1500m in 2016.

Now 25, she has suddenly returned to form after competing sparingly in the intervening years and has also impressed in the 3000m this season.

Looking out for Ryan Crouser should pose no difficulties. The double Olympic shot put champion has produced 163 throws beyond 22 metres, accounting for over a third of 22m throws in history.

Due to studies, injury and the Covid pandemic, he has yet to make it to a World Indoor Championships.

Crouser set the world indoor record of 22.82m in January 2021 and the world outdoor record of 23.37 in June.

He says the secret was not forcing it.

“I feel like the biggest thing to getting to the world record was getting out of my own way and letting it happen.”

At 19, Keely Hodgkinson is ten years Crouser’s junior, but no less ambitious. The 800m runner may only so far have the British indoor record to her name, but says: “I think all four of the major championships is possible.

“My body I think will be able to cope. But it comes down to the emotional and mental energy going from one to another."

In 2021, she followed European indoor gold with Olympic silver.

Look out too for local hero Ivana Vuleta (nee Spanovic) in the women’s long jump and Olympic gold medallist Miltiadis Tentoglu of Greece in the men’s event.

World Athletics Indoor Championships Belgrade 2022 schedule

The championships run from 18 to 20 March. Day 1 features heptathlon and pentathlon events, plus the men’s triple jump, the women’s shot put, the men’s long jump, the women’s 3000m and the women’s 60m.

The heptathlon continues on day 2. Look out too for the women’s high jump and the women’s pole vault, the men’s 800m and the men’s shot put. The women’s and men’s 400m are also on the agenda, as is the women’s 1500m, the women’s 60m hurdles and the men’s 60m.

Day 3 is overflowing with action, featuring: the men’s high jump, the women’s triple jump, the men’s 3000m, the men’s pole vault, the women’s long jump, the women’s 800m, the men’s 1500m, the men’s 60m hurdles and the 4 x 400m relays.

The action takes place at Belgrade’s 18,386-seaterStark Arena, which has hosted numerous sporting and musical events, including Eurovision 2008.