New Zealand will be represented by four athletes at the first World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest this weekend, and all four of them are women.
World Athletics published the final entry lists on Monday, confirming 381 athletes from 65 federations for the three nights of competition at the National Athletics Centre from 11 to 13 September. The entry lists, revised at 3.30pm Central European Summer Time on Monday, list Imogen Ayris and Eliza McCartney in the pole vault, Zoe Hobbs in the 100 metres and Tori Moorby in the javelin throw.
The pole vault is where the New Zealand presence is most striking. The women’s field is capped at eight and those eight come from only four countries. Four of them are American. Two of them are New Zealanders. Angelica Moser of Switzerland and Tina Ε utej of Slovenia make up the rest. On a start line built to hold the best eight vaulters on the planet, a quarter of the names are from a country of five million people.
McCartney goes in with a personal best of 4.94 metres, the New Zealand record, and a season’s best this year of 4.81. Ayris has a personal best of 4.81 set at the Paavo Nurmi Games in Finland in June, and matches it as her season’s best. The World Athletics rankings used for entry put Ayris seventh in the world and McCartney ninth. The pair finished first and third in the pole vault at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games in August, with McCartney clearing 4.65 for gold and Ayris taking bronze, a result Newswire covered at the time.
Hobbs is the only New Zealander in a track event. She is one of 17 women entered in the 100 metres, which will be run as semifinals and a final on the same night. Her personal best and season’s best both stand at 10.93, the mark she ran in Glasgow to win Commonwealth gold and become the first New Zealander to win that title. That time is a New Zealand and Oceania record. On season’s best she sits ninth of the 17 entered, behind a group led by the American Melissa Jefferson-Wooden at 10.70 and Julien Alfred of Saint Lucia, also on 10.70.
Moorby is seventh in the world rankings and one of eight throwers in the javelin. Her personal best of 63.26 metres, thrown in Yokohama in 2023, remains the New Zealand record, and her season’s best of 60.40 came at the Oceania championships in Darwin. She won silver at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow with 60.44. The field she meets in Budapest includes Yan Ziyi of China, who has thrown 71.74 this year, and the Olympic champion Haruka Kitaguchi of Japan.
All three New Zealand events fall on the second night, Saturday 12 September in Budapest, which is Sunday morning in New Zealand. The javelin final comes first, then the pole vault final, then the 100 metres semifinals and final.
The Ultimate Championship is new and deliberately stripped back. There are no heats and no qualifying rounds in the field events. Each field event is a straight final of eight. Track events are run as semifinals into a final, while the 1500 metres, 5000 metres and relays go straight to a final. Twenty-eight disciplines are packed into three evening sessions. World Athletics says the prize pot is a record US$10 million, with individual winners taking US$150,000, and the entry is drawn from Olympic champions, world champions, Diamond League winners and the best performers of the year.
“The Ultimate Championship will bring together Olympic champions, world champions, Wanda Diamond League winners and the year’s best-performing athletes across 28 disciplines during three action-packed evenings of competition,” World Athletics said in its statement on Monday.
One name New Zealanders will look for and not find is Hamish Kerr. The Cantabrian is the reigning Olympic champion from Paris, the world champion from Tokyo last September, the 2024 world indoor champion and the 2022 Commonwealth champion, and his 2.36 metres is the New Zealand and Oceania record. He is not in the men’s high jump entry. That field of eight is headed by JuVaughn Harrison of the United States, Oleh Doroshchuk of Ukraine and the Italian Gianmarco Tamberi, and its final closes out the third night.
Kerr has not competed anywhere since March, when he cleared 2.28 metres at the New Zealand track and field championships in Auckland for a tenth national title. He withdrew from the Commonwealth Games in July and was unusually plain about the reason.
“The start of this year, had a massive few years, felt like the body was good and ready to get training, but we realised pretty quickly I was pretty burnt out,” Kerr told reporters in Glasgow at the time. “Took a bit of a step back and had a nice physical mental reset just over the last couple of months.”
He was then billed for the Diamond League meeting in Silesia on 23 August against Tamberi, but RNZ reported on 5 August that he had confirmed he would not compete there either, as he was still taking time away. Newstalk ZB reported on Tuesday that his break is now expected to run through to the New Zealand summer, which would leave the March nationals as his only competition of 2026.
The four who are going arrive in decent shape. Ayris, Hobbs and Tom Walsh all made the Diamond League final in Brussels at the start of this month, where Ayris was fifth with 4.55 metres, Hobbs sixth in 11.14 and Walsh sixth in the shot put with 21.67. Walsh is not entered in Budapest. McCartney and Moorby come in off the Commonwealth Games rather than the Diamond League circuit.
World Athletics notes that entry lists are correct at the time of publication and remain subject to change, and event previews are due before the first session on Friday.
Will Eliza McCartney or Imogen Ayris get on the podium in Budapest, and can Zoe Hobbs make the 100 metres final? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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