Georgia Bell, Molly Caudery, and Jeremiah Azu will spearhead the British team at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Nanjing, China, aiming to secure gold medals for Great Britain.
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03-21, 2025The trio are part of an 11-strong British contingent, captained by 1500m runner Neil Gourley. The three-day championships will be broadcast in full via the BBC platforms, with the event commencing on Friday.
A host of international track and field stars, including Armand Duplantis, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, and Yaroslava Mahuchikh, are also set to compete for honors.
The World Indoor Athletics Championships are usually held every two years, but the event in Nanjing was postponed in 2020, 2021, and 2023 due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. With Glasgow having already hosted the 2024 event and the bidding process for the 2026 edition underway, Nanjing was scheduled to host the 2025 championships.
This means athletes will have two opportunities to win a world title this year, with the outdoor championships taking place in Tokyo, Japan, in September.
Hunter-Bell will be looking to bounce back from the disappointment of missing out on the podium at the European Indoor Championships two weeks ago. The 31-year-old Olympic 1500m bronze medalist was among the favorites for gold in Apeldoorn but faded in the final stages to finish fourth, while her teammate Revee Walcott-Nolan earned her first international medal.
Ethiopia's Gudaf Tsegay is the overwhelming favorite for gold in Nanjing. The eight-time world medalist boasts the fastest time this season, a full five seconds quicker than anyone else this year, having run 3:53.92 in February. Her compatriot Diribe Welteji and American athlete Heather MacLean have also run under four minutes in 2025, with Hunter-Bell fourth on the list with her season's best of 4:00.63.
Like Hunter-Bell, Caudery has enjoyed a rapid rise in 2024, winning the World Indoor Athletics Championships 12 months ago, and she is unmatched in 2024 after breaking the British record with 4.92m. But the 25-year-old was left hugely disappointed after failing to qualify for the final at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Caudery opted to skip the European Indoor Championships to focus on her world title defense, while she has also been managing a calf injury, she competed in February with a jump of 4.85m and holds the season's best.
Azu, 23, will be looking to use his European gold – his first individual international medal – as a springboard to a world podium place in the men's 60m. Olympic 400m finalist Amber Anning will hope to challenge in another major final after being disqualified for a track infringement at the European Indoor Championships. However, European 3000m silver medalist George Mills and Innes Fitzgerald have both been forced to withdraw from the British team through illness.
Swedish star Duplantis improved his own men's pole vault world record to 6.27m in February, and the Swedish star will be looking to put on another show as he bids for a third world indoor title in four years. The two-time defending Olympic champion is one of the sport's brightest stars, having already broken 11 world records and won six world titles before the age of 25.
Ingebrigtsen completed a hat-trick of 1500m and 3000m doubles earlier this month to equal the record for European Indoor gold medals, but the Tokyo Olympic champion is yet to win a world 1500m title. The 24-year-old Norwegian won indoor silver in 2022, and he also claimed silver in the outdoor events in 2022 and 2023 behind Great Britain's Jake Wightman and Josh Kerr, and he will be determined to go one better here as he bids to replicate that double on the global stage.
Elsewhere, Olympic champion and world record holder Mahuchikh in the women's high jump will be looking to regain the world title she won in 2022, while American Grant Holloway will be chasing his sixth world hurdles title.
The British team line-up:
Women: 60m - Amy Hunt; 400m - Amber Anning; 1500m - Georgia Bell, Revee Walcott-Nolan; Pole vault - Molly Caudery; Long jump - Funminiyi Olajide.
Men: 60m - Jeremiah Azu, Andy Robertson; 1500m - Adam Fogg, Neil Gourley; Shot put - Scott Lincoln.
World Indoor Athletics Championships viewing guide (all times GMT):
Friday, March 21: 02:00 - 06:05 BBC iPlayer, BBC Sport website and app; 10:15 - 13:45 BBC Two. Finals: Men's triple jump (03:05), Men's high jump (10:30), Women's shot put (11:50), Women's pentathlon 800m (13:15), Men's 60m (13:24).
Saturday, March 22: 02:00 - 04:40 BBC iPlayer, BBC Sport website and app; 10:30 - 13:45 BBC Two. Finals: Women's pole vault (02:10), Men's pole vault (10:34), Women's triple jump (11:10), Women's 3000m (11:15), Men's 3000m (11:35), Women's 400m (12:44), Men's 400m (12:55), Men's 60m hurdles (13:05), Women's 60m (13:18).
Sunday, March 23: 02:00 - 05:45 BBC iPlayer, BBC Sport website and app; 11:00 - 13:45 BBC Two. Finals: Women's long jump (02:19), Women's high jump (03:35), Men's shot put (11:38), Men's long jump (11:40), Men's heptathlon 1000m (12:02), Men's 1500m (12:15), Women's 1500m (12:28), Men's 800m (12:40), Women's 800m (12:54), Women's 60m hurdles (12:57), Men's 4x400m relay (13:11), Women's 4x400m relay (13:21).
