Birmingham preview

Mondo Duplantis, Elaine Thompson-Herah, Keely Hodgkinson, Jake Wightman, photo by British Athletics

The Birmingham Winter Indoor Tour stop is one of the finest meets in the Winter Indoor Tour. The meet is Saturday, February 19, 2022. Stuart Weir did this piece on the Birmingham presser, which was held on Friday, February 18, 2022.

Mondo Duplantis, Elaine Thompson-Herah, Keely Hodgkinson, Jake Wightman, photo by British Athletics

Birmingham preview

Mondo Duplantis, Elaine Thompson-Herah, Keely Hodgkinson, Jake Wightman, photo by British Athletics

The Müller Indoor Grand Prix Birmingham, part of the World Indoor Tour Gold series, takes place on Saturday with ten reigning Olympic or world champions in the field including current Olympic champions: Elaine Thompson-Herah, Shaunae Miller-Uibo, Mariya Lasitskene and Mondo Duplantis. Athletes in the line-ups have a combined number of 136 world and Olympic medals between them. In addition, they own a whopping 180 Commonwealth or European medals. At the pre-event press conference four athletes shared their thoughts:

Keely Hodgkinson, Olympic silver-medallist, preparing for her first race of the year, said “I hope it’s going to be fast”. She confirmed that she would be in the British Indoor Championships next week seeking selection for the World Indoors. She added that she had been impressed with Natoya Goule’s 1:58.46 in Lievin this week and was looking forward to racing her on Saturday.

She said that she did not feel pressure from what she had achieved last year – “it’s more what I myself want to achieve”. She added, “2022 will be a tough year for British athletes with three championships”. He said that she was prioritizing the World Championships but would also do the Commonwealth Games deciding only then whether to add the European to her schedule.

Mondo Duplantis was asked how he paced himself towards potential world record attempts: He said: “It depends on the day and where your body is at. Sometimes you want to save your legs for the higher bars. Sometimes you need [more vaults] to gain confidence and get onto the right poles to attempt the high bars, because the high bars are really tough and everything has to be perfect with all the right numbers”.

Commenting on running her PR in Birmingham 6.98 five years ago to the day, Elaine Thompson-Herah admitted that “my start is not the best”. She added that she was running in Birmingham “to see where I am right now, not to put myself under pressure…I am not sure if I will take on the World Indoors”. Asked about her motivation, having achieved so much, she said that she wanted to be the best ever woman sprinter and confirmed that she thought that breaking world record was certainly possible.

Jake Wightman said that he had not been surprised by Jakob Ingebrigtsen breaking the world indoor 1500m record as it was “a time which he runs pretty much every week on the Diamond League circuit. I had hoped that last year he had reached his max but now it looks as if he is going to push the standard even higher and it means that everyone else will have to reach that”.