From Tigist Assefa to Juan Carlos Zabala, we’ve had the privilege of sharing many more athlete stories in 2023.

As the year draws to a close, we look back at some of the most read features.

Antonio Watson

At first, he appears quiet and mild-mannered off the track, in stark contrast to his fierce competitiveness on it. But don’t be fooled by his gentle and unassuming nature; a strong sense of determination fuels him.

Jamaica’s world 400m champion Antonio Watson (© Getty Images)

Meet Antonio Watson, the newly minted world 400m champion. His stunning victory on that beautiful evening in Budapest in August saw him join a distinguished group of Jamaican 400m runners who have won senior global titles.

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Femke Bol

Just four days after running the indoor 400m in less than 50 seconds – clocking 49.96 in Metz to go fourth on the all-time list – Femke Bol arrived in Lievin for the World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold meeting with the expectation of running something even faster.

Femke Bol breaks the world indoor 400m record in Apeldoorn (© Erik van Leeuwen)

After winning by more than a second in 50.20, she said: “This is a good race I can be happy with. I hoped to run a 49-second race again. But this is the real world, not a dream world.”

Fast forward four more days – very fast forward – and the 22-year-old 400m hurdles specialist was in that dream world, coming to terms with the staggering fact that she had just beaten the oldest track world record on the books.

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Mario Garcia Romo

Mario Garcia Romo may be one of the newest members to the 1500m sub-3:30 club, but the Spaniard cares more about championship performances than fast times.

But sometimes – as was the case at last year’s World Championships – a fast time is required for a strong championship showing.

Mario Garcia Romo after taking bronze at the European Championships (© Getty Images)

In fact, to simply secure his place on the Spanish team for the World Championships, Garcia Romo produced a lifetime best of 3:35.52 to win the national title, beating Spanish record-holder Mohamed Katir.

Garcia Romo’s momentum continued at the World Championships three weeks later as he navigated the rounds, setting a PB of 3:35.43 in his heat, finishing second in his semifinal, and then placing fourth in the final in a huge PB of 3:30.20 – just 0.30 shy of a medal.

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Mary Moraa

Athletics may be painful for world 800m champion Mary Moraa, but it has changed her life. It has made her a somebody.

“Athletics has uplifted me, from a nobody to now a somebody, from the poorest of all,” Moraa says.

Mary Moraa in Budapest (© Getty Images)

“If I stayed in the village in Kisii, western Kenya, I wouldn’t be known, but my talent has made me known. Yes, athletics has changed my story, my life greatly. It is hard to explain,” adds Moraa, who has been nicknamed the Kisii Express.

Moraa likens athletics to being in school, each day with different subjects for the students – which translates to different training and workouts for athletes.

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Donald Thomas

By now, many others would have walked away. But not Donald Thomas. Not when he has so much left to give.

Donald Thomas at the World Athletics Championships Oregon22 (© Getty Images)

It’s 16 years since the Bahamian won the world title in the high jump, soaring over 2.35m in Osaka. That marked his debut at the World Athletics Championships. He was 23. He’s 39 now and, in the years since, Thomas has returned to every edition, racking up nine appearances in all, which no other jumper has ever achieved.

There’s a good reason for that, given the strain that the vertical and horizontal jumps put on the joints and tendons, meaning athletes with Thomas’s longevity are rare.

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Faith Kipyegon and Patrick Sang

For three years Faith Kipyegon had been ready to break the world 1500m record, says her coach Patrick Sang.

Multiple world record-breaker Faith Kipyegon (© Vincent Riemersma / NN Running)

That a week later she would then take down the 5000m mark too, well that wasn’t in the plan. The Kenyan star has since added the mile record for good measure – taking it to 4:07.64 – and she believes that the four-minute barrier will one day be broken.

Since 2019, Kipyegon’s journey has been guided by 1992 Olympic steeplechase silver medallist Sang and his assistants at the Global Sports Camp in Kaptagat in the Kenyan Rift Valley. Every session meticulously planned, splits on the track exact, led by her pacemaker of 13 years, Bernard Soi. Everything else done with uncompromising purpose.

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Jakob Ingebrigtsen

Following the successful defence of his 1500m title at the European Athletics Indoor Championships in Istanbul, Norway’s 22-year-old Jakob Ingebrigtsen was asked to describe his ambition.

“My main goal is to become the best runner that ever existed,” said the athlete who has already accrued Olympic, world and multiple European gold medals as well as a world indoor 1500m record. “To do that, I will need to win more races and the next one is tomorrow.”

Jakob Ingebrigtsen at the European Indoor Championships (© Getty Images)

Guess what? He won that race too, a 3000m heat. And the following day he won the next one, the 3000m final, to repeat the double he achieved at the 2021 edition of the championships in Torun.

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Sintayehu Vissa

Most people who know Italian middle-distance runner Sintayehu Vissa simply call her ‘Sinta’.

In both Italy and the US, people had trouble understanding her full name, and shortened it to make it easier.

But her full name, Sintayehu, in Amharic, loosely means: “I have seen many things”.

Middle-distance runner Sintayehu Vissa (© Kelcey McKinney)

Even though Vissa remembers little Amharic from her childhood, she knows the meaning of her name. “The meaning of my name makes me proud,” she says. “I feel like I’ve seen a lot of things.” The 26 year-old, who later this week will vie for a medal at the European Indoor Championship in Istanbul, Turkey, has indeed seen a lot.

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Woody Kincaid

Many athletes have a trademark tactic. For Woody Kincaid, it’s his kick. No matter the distance, something switches when he hits the bell.

“It’s like, I have to give everything now,” he says. “I’ve come this far, maybe I have something left and we’re about to find out.”

Now Kincaid is applying the same strategy to the rest of his elite racing career.

Woddy Kincaid at the World Athletics Championships Oregon22 (© Getty Images)

“It’s definitely the back nine of my career, no doubt, but it’s also time to make it happen,” he says. “I have the development, I have the workouts underneath me, I have the aerobic base. Everything is there, if I can just put it together.”

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Wayne Pinnock, Tajay Gayle and Carey McLeod

Shortly after the men’s long jump final at the World Athletics Championships Budapest 23, bronze medallist Tajay Gayle was asked about Jamaican athletes finishing second, third and fourth, with Wayne Pinnock, Gayle and Carey McLeod filling the spots behind Olympic champion Miltiadis Tentoglou of Greece.

“That’s never happened before,” a Jamaican journalist told Gayle, who smiled as he responded: “Yeah, but a 1-2-3 sounds better.”

As the focus starts to turn towards the Paris Olympics, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility, even if Tentoglou will take some shifting from the top of the long jump tree. Still, the evidence was there in Budapest, just as it has been across the breadth of the long jumping landscape in recent years: Jamaica is on the rise, and fast.

Culled from World Athletics

Shortly after the men’s long jump final at the World Athletics Championships Budapest 23, bronze medallist Tajay Gayle was asked about Jamaican athletes finishing second, third and fourth, with Wayne Pinnock, Gayle and Carey McLeod filling the spots behind Olympic champion Miltiadis Tentoglou of Greece.

“That’s never happened before,” a Jamaican journalist told Gayle, who smiled as he responded: “Yeah, but a 1-2-3 sounds better.”

As the focus starts to turn towards the Paris Olympics, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility, even if Tentoglou will take some shifting from the top of the long jump tree. Still, the evidence was there in Budapest, just as it has been across the breadth of the long jumping landscape in recent years: Jamaica is on the rise, and fast.

Tajay Gayle, Miltiadis Tentoglou and Wayne Pinnock in Budapest (© Getty Images)

Across the first 16 editions of the World Championships, Jamaica won a total of two medals in the men’s long jump. In the last three editions, they’ve bagged three, the victory by Gayle in 2019 having a clear ripple effect on his compatriots. Chief among them was Pinnock, who won silver in Budapest, his 8.50m leap in the final leaving him just 2cm adrift of Tentoglou.

“Seeing Tajay in 2019, I told myself, ‘I want to be on that level,’” he said. “I did it and I’m forever grateful.”

Gayle, Pinnock and McLeod have taken similar journeys to this point. The trio are all natives of Kingston. Gayle grew up in August Town, an underprivileged area of the Jamaican capital, and after long jumping 6.50m at the high school ‘Champs’, he earned a scholarship to the University of Technology in Kingston, or UTech.

“Coming from August Town, I had nothing else to do,” he said in an interview with Spikes. “It was a straight road to UTech. No turn-off, no other choices.” At UTech, he came under the guidance of Stephen Francis, who has guided many Jamaican greats, and Gayle improved rapidly, jumping eight metres for the first time in 2017.

Pinnock also grew up with few resources, but with a plentiful supply of both ambition and potential. “Coming from the poor population in Jamaica, (athletics) made a big, big impact on my life,” he said in Budapest, shortly after winning silver. “It doesn’t matter where you’re from: anything you put your mind to, you can achieve it. I always tell myself that. It doesn’t matter where your background is. Pressure builds diamonds.”

Pinnock, 22, started out as a sprint hurdler before gravitating more towards the long jump in recent years. In 2017, he finished sixth in the world U18 long jump final in Nairobi, jumping a PB of 7.27m at the age of 16. The following year, he improved to 7.99m and won bronze at the World U20 Championships in Tampere. He broke the eight-metre barrier for the first time in 2018, while lowering his 110m hurdles best (at the U20 height of 99.1cm) to 13.06, a Champs’ record.

In 2021, he enrolled at the University of Tennessee, joining McLeod, who had been his high school teammate at Kingston College. McLeod, now 25, has done a different juggling act to Pinnock in recent years, combining the long jump with the triple jump, holding respective personal bests of 8.40m and 17.17m. McLeod won gold in both of those events at Champs back in 2017 and claimed long jump gold and triple jump silver at that year’s Carifta Games.

Carey McLeod in long jump action in Budapest (© Getty Images)

Having initially studied at Emporia State in Kansas, he transferred to the University of Tennessee in 2019 and won long jump bronze at the 2021 NCAA Championships, qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics in both the long and triple jump. McLeod was a little below his best in 2022 but after transferring to the University of Arkansas along with Pinnock, he bounced back better than ever in 2023, winning the NCAA indoor long jump title in March with 8.40m and the NCAA outdoor title in June with 8.26m. The pair train under the guidance of coach Travis Geopfert, who returned to Arkansas in 2021 after three years at Tennessee.

Back in 2021, McLeod was asked about the growth of Jamaican jumpers by Sportsmax. “We all are the younger generation coming up in the sport,” he said. “I can happily say we are on the rise to taking over in the jumps in the years to come.”

It has proven to be prophetic, given the trio’s recent exploits.

Heading to Budapest, McLeod, Pinnock and Gayle were ranked fourth, sixth and ninth respectively based on their season’s bests, but they rose together towards the top in the final. Pinnock opened with 8.40m, then improved to 8.50m, edging ahead of Tentoglou on countback at the head of the standings. It was only in the final round that the Greek star pulled it out of the bag, his 8.52m handing him the one title he’d been missing in his career. Gayle jumped 8.27m for third, the same distance as McLeod, who was edged into fourth on countback.

For Gayle, the bronze felt like a huge victory, given the injuries he’d dealt with since winning the world title in 2019. The 27-year-old competed through pain in 2021, managing a best of just 7.69m in the Olympic final in Tokyo while jumping with a knee injury, while a bone bruise plagued him in 2022.

“The injuries kind of develop a phobia in the run-up so I don’t want to run too fast out of fear of getting hurt again,” he said in Budapest. “But it’s something I’ve been overcoming since last year, on to this year. I’m sure I’m going to get it (right) by next year.”

Tajay Gayle at the 2019 World Championships (© AFP/Getty Images)

Gayle trains with the MVP Track Club and hitting a high speed on the runway is an essential part of his optimal jump. His chance in Budapest looked in jeopardy when he re-injured his knee just two weeks before the World Championships. “I wasn’t training for three days, and by the fourth or fifth day it was getting better and better,” he said. “I’d like to thank MVP and the staff for helping me to overcome that. It’s a good day today, we have silver and bronze. We wanted 1-2-3 but the boy showed up today, so we have to go again.”

Gayle knows that with a clean bill of health, that bronze could be upgraded to silver or gold in 2024. “I know I can do better, but it’s hard for me to really get the run-up since that injury,” he said. “But by next year, everything good, man.”

For McLeod, a new life now beckons. He recently joined Gayle in the professional ranks, while Pinnock is “going to talk about that” same move in the weeks ahead. Whatever is decided, he plans to finish his studies at Arkansas.

“The first thing to do is to finish school, the most important thing,” he said. “You don’t know when you can go out there and not (be able to) compete anymore.”

For Pinnock, the silver medal crowned a steady rise to the top rank of global long jumping, and in the aftermath of his achievement, his two-year-old daughter Zaharah was foremost in his mind.

“I did this for my baby girl, she made all this possible,” he said. “My mind was clear, go out there and compete, and I got a silver. Words can’t explain how I’m feeling. It’s really a dream come true.”

Wayne Pinnock at the World Athletics Championships Budapest 23 (© Getty Images)

Pinnock had injury issues in 2021 that sidelined his bid to reach the Tokyo Olympics, but he bounced back to win the Jamaican title in a PB of 8.14m last year before finishing ninth in the world final in Oregon. Having improved his PB to a world-leading 8.54m during qualification in Budapest, he knows what could be possible in 2024, for him and his compatriots.

Tentoglou, of course, remains the man to beat, but while the Jamaicans were content to fill the next three positions behind him on this occasion, they’ll be looking for more in Paris.

“Congratulations to him,” said Pinnock. “We’ll come again for the Olympics, and see what we’ve got in the bag.”