Picking World Championships podium people in January—when a crystal ball sometimes looks more like a snow globe—is always risky business, but it’s ultra-risky when you do it for a year in which the WC is set to roll around on its latest dates ever, September 28–October 06. We assigned the unenviable task to a pair from our World Rankings Panel, Richard Hymans doing the men, Jonathan Berenbom the women. Note that we didn’t include either athletes under provisional doping bans or Russians who have yet to be granted Neutral status by the IAAF. If the IAAF’s proposed testosterone rules finally get the green light, that too could change things.
Overall, the choices add up to a solid 28-medal haul (14 men, 14 women) for Team USA, 11 of them gold (5 men, 6 women). Last time around, London ’17, the U.S. total was 24 medals, split 13/17, with 10 golds (3 men, 7 women).
| MEN’S MEDAL PICKS | |||
| GOLD | SILVER | BRONZE | |
| 100 | Christian Coleman (USA) | Ronnie Baker (USA) | Reece Prescod (Great Britain) |
| 200 | Noah Lyles (USA) | Ramil Guliyev (Turkey) | Akeem Bloomfield (Jamaica) |
| 400 | Wayde van Niekerk (South Africa) | Michael Norman (USA) | Abdalelah Haroun (Qatar) |
| 800 | Emmanuel Korir (Kenya) | Clayton Murphy (USA) | Michael Saruni (Kenya) |
| 1500 | Timothy Cheruiyot (Kenya) | Elijah Manangoi (Kenya) | Jakob Ingebrigtsen (Norway) |
| Steeple | Conseslus Kipruto (Kenya) | Soufiane El Bakkali (Morocco) | Evan Jager (USA) |
| 5000 | Selemon Barega (Ethiopia) | Yomif Kejelcha (Ethiopia) | Hagos Gebrhiwet (Ethiopia) |
| 10,000 | Joshua Cheptegei (Uganda) | Rhonex Kipruto (Kenya) | Richard Yator (Kenya) |
| 110H | Sergey Shubenkov (Russia) | Omar McLeod (Jamaica) | Ronald Levy (Jamaica) |
| 400H | Abderrahmane Samba (Qatar) | Rai Benjamin (USA) | Karsten Warholm (Norway) |
| Mar | Eliud Kipchoge (Kenya) | Leul Gebrselassie (Ethiopia) | Tamirat Tola (Ethiopia) |
| 20W | Eiki Takahashi (Japan) | Eider Arévalo (Colombia) | Daisuke Matsunaga (Japan) |
| 50W | Matej Tóth (Slovakia) | Maryan Zakalnytskyy (Ukraine) | Hiroki Arai (Japan) |
| 4 x 100 | United States | Great Britain | Jamaica |
| 4 x 400 | United States | Botswana | Bahamas |
| HJ | Mutaz Barshim (Qatar) | Brandon Starc (Australia) | Maksim Nedasekau (Belarus) |
| PV | Timor Morgunov (Russia) | Sam Kendricks (USA) | Mondo Duplantis (Sweden) |
| LJ | Juan Miguel Echevarría (Cuba) | Luvo Manyonga (South Africa) | Ruswahl Samaai (South Africa) |
| TJ | Christian Taylor (USA) | Pedro Pichardo (Portugal) | Will Claye (USA) |
| SP | Tom Walsh (New Zealand) | Ryan Crouser (USA) | Darrell Hill (USA) |
| DT | Andrius Gudžius (Lithuania) | Fedrick Dacres (Jamaica) | Ehsan Hadadi (Iran) |
| HT | Paweł Fajdek (Poland) | Wojciech Nowicki (Poland) | Bence Halász (Hungary) |
| JT | Thomas Röhler (Germany) | Magnus Kirt (Estonia) | Andreas Hofmann (Germany) |
| Dec | Kevin Mayer (France) | Damian Warner (Canada) | Arthur Abele (Germany) |