Duplantis leads creme de la creme at 'game-changing' Ultimate Championship

BUDAPEST, Hungary — Armand “Mondo” Duplantis is the headline act as the world's top-ranked track and field athletes gather for this weekend's inaugural Ultimate Championship in Budapest, where they will compete for unmatched prize money totalling $10 million.

From Friday, some 381 athletes from 65 federations will gather for three nights of competition at the Zsivotzky Gyula Nemzeti Atletikai Kozpont stadium that hosted the world championships in 2023.

Automatic qualifiers for the season-ending Ultimate event include 26 Olympic champions from the 2024 Paris Games, 26 world champions from Tokyo last year, and 25 Diamond League winners from the 2026 season, along with the best performers of the year based on the world rankings qualification system.

There are no quotas for countries, with inclusion based solely on performance.

"We have created the Ultimate to ensure every athletics season culminates with a major global championship — one with real meaning for the athletes, fans, media and broadcasters," said World Athletics president Sebastian Coe, with 2026 having neither a world championships nor an Olympic Games.

"Our North Star is to maximize our global broadcast audience and so it is unapologetically made for TV to engage broadcasters in a new way to help further elevate national heroes."

On the track, the two semifinals in the 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, 100m hurdles/110m hurdles and 400m hurdles will feature eight athletes, and the top four in each will make it through to the final. The 1,500m, 5,000m and relay races will be straight finals.

All field events will be straight finals, although there is no place for shot put, discus or women's hammer throw.

The horizontal jumps, with the men's triple jump a notable absence, and throws will feature four rounds, with each of the eight athletes guaranteed two attempts.

Each Ultimate winner will receive the top prize of $150,000, a sum World Athletics said was a game changer in a sport often seen to be underfunded.

But every athlete will earn: an eighth-placed finisher in an individual even, for example, will bag $10,000.

"We have a $10-million prize pot where every athlete who competes goes home with something," said Coe of the 28 disciplines delivered in a fast-paced, made-for-television format.

World and Olympic pole vault champion Duplantis, who improved his own world record to 6.31m earlier this year, will face a field that includes Emmanouil Karalis, who has cleared 6.20m this season and arrives in Budapest as the Diamond League champion.

Duplantis withdrew from the Brussels Diamond League finals as a precaution when tightness in his leg resurfaced, raising questions over how fit he is coming into Budapest.

Several of this season's other world record-breakers will also be in action: Ja'Kobe Tharp in the 110m hurdles, US teammate Masai Russell in the 100m hurdles and Brazil's Alison dos Santos in the men’s 400m hurdles.

Other Olympic champions entered include Gabby Thomas, Marileidy Paulino, Keely Hodgkinson, Yaroslava Mahuchikh, Letsile Tebogo and Ethan Katzberg, while world champions Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, Oblique Seville and Collen Kebinatshipi are also among those set to compete.

The middle-distance program is particularly attractive, with the women's 800m featuring world leader Audrey Werro, Olympic champion Keely Hodgkinson and Femke Broeders-Bol.

Missing from the track, however, will be injured Olympic 100m champion Noah Lyles and Olympic and world long jump gold medallist Tara Davis-Woodhall, who sustained concussion in a car crash last week.

"We want to bring our fans athletics like they have never seen it before — with the best of the best athletes in our sport competing head-to-head in a passion-fueled, high-octane festival of sport, with sound, light and innovation," said Coe.

"This is the holy grail of all sports — how do you reach out to all audiences in a way that is familiar to them?" he told AFP.

Duplantis said the championship will be "the ultimate high in a year when we do not have a world championships or Olympic Games".

"Even with fewer events there will still be 26 individual events taking place over just three nights — the pace will be insane."

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