• Olympic champion Masai Russell and world champion Danielle Williams to face off
• Seven different women have won Diamond League races this season
• Four of the seven fastest athletes of all time will be in Tokyo

The women's 100m hurdles at the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25 will be highly competitive, with 10 of the 14 fastest athletes in the world this year among those colliding.

These hurdlers, who have gone head-to-head throughout the season, have blown the field open, with seven different winners across the Diamond League meetings. Only USA’s Grace Stark has won three, while Jamaica’s Ackera Nugent has won two. That demonstrates the incredible depth and unpredictability in the event.

Olympic champion Masai Russell is the world leader and she heads to Tokyo with the second-fastest 100m hurdles of all time to her name – 12.17 set in May – and that forms part of a packed season of 24 races that began in January. Her win at the US Championships was followed by victory in Silesia, where she set a Diamond League record of 12.19, and she then finished runner-up to Nadine Visser in Lausanne – her final race ahead of Tokyo. The 25-year-old has rebounded in great style after the fall in Budapest that kept her out of the World Championships final in 2023 and, after her win at the Olympics in Paris, she has the chance to go for gold again on the global stage.

One athlete who could pose a serious challenge to Russell is her compatriot Stark, who was fifth at the Paris Games. On top of the world rankings and third on this season’s top list with a PB of 12.21, Stark has notched victories this season in Shanghai/Keqiao, Stockholm and Paris, where she stormed to a third Diamond League meeting record of the season and that PB.

There’s also the experienced defending champion, Danielle Williams from Jamaica. Williams, who claimed her first world title in 2015, won the Xiamen Diamond League before setting a PB of 12.31 for a fourth-place finish in Silesia.

Her compatriot Nugent took down some big names in Eugene and at the Diamond League Final in Zurich to claim her first Diamond League title. That performance will have been a major confidence booster for the 2021 world U20 champion, who finished fifth at the World Championships in Budapest. Nugent’s season best is 12.30.

Nigerian hurdler Tobi Amusan has a chance to reclaim the title she won in 2022 in Eugene, where she clocked her world record of 12.12. The 28-year-old, who finished sixth at the last edition of the World Championships in Budapest, won in Rabat with a season’s best and meeting record of 12.45. She was runner-up in both Paris and Eugene, and claimed victory at the Ostrava Golden Spike in between.

After narrowly missing out on the podium at the Paris Games with a fourth-place finish, Dutch hurdler Visser will battle for a medal in Tokyo. Visser set a Dutch record of 12.28 in Silesia, which places her sixth this season, and she won at the Lausanne Diamond League ahead of Olympic champion Russell.

Other athletes to watch are Jamaica’s Tokyo Olympic bronze medallist Megan Tapper, who set a PB of 12.34 when claiming her Monaco win, plus Switzerland’s Ditaji Kambundji, USA’s Alaysha Johnson and two-time world indoor champion Devynne Charlton of The Bahamas.

Michelle Katami for World Athletics