Race on to fill Bolt's shoes

Group of young guns hoping to grab limelight in Tokyo as Olympics begins life without Usain

Usain Bolt may have hung up his running shoes in 2017, but the Tokyo Olympics is the first Games in 17 years not to feature the incomparable Jamaican sprint superstar.

In his absence, a raft of up-and-coming track-and-field athletes, headlined by Swedish pole vaulter Armand Duplantis, US sprinter Noah Lyles, and recent 400m hurdles world-record setters Karsten Warholm and Sydney McLaughlin, arrive in Japan looking to build their own legacies.

While a 20-year-old Bolt was a bit-part player at the 2004 Athens Olympics, eliminated in the first round of the 200m, he went on to win eight golds spanning the 2008,2012 and 2016 Games.

There is no doubt that the sport has struggled to fill his sizable shoes.

So it is a shame that the 10 days of athletics starting in Tokyo on Friday will take place without spectators due to COVID-19 countermeasures, because they feature a group of young stars more than capable of taking up at least some of Bolt's mantle.

Adding to the excitement, advances in spike technology have ushered in a slew of middle- and long-distance specialists set on hunting world records whenever they take to the track.

Record chasers

Duplantis has taken the men's pole vault into another stratosphere by setting not only a world record of 6.18 meters indoors last year, but also vaulting 6.15m outdoors to finally improve by a centimeter Sergey Bubka's previous best set in 1994.

"Winning is the only goal really," the 21-year-old said when asked whether more records were the target in Tokyo.

"In a dream world I would like to go and break the world record and do something very legendary at the Games. But it's my first Games, I just want to win, that's the only thing on my mind."

The 400m hurdles is set to be one of the standout track events for both men and women, after Norway's Warholm and American McLaughlin both posted new world records in the run-in to Tokyo.

Both have close rivals breathing down their necks in the shape of American duo Rai Benjamin and reigning world and Olympic champion Dalilah Muhammad.

Trayvon Bromell is bidding to become the first US sprinter to win the Olympic men's 100m since Justin Gatlin in 2004－and for once, there is no serious Jamaican threat.