IT WILL BE GREAT!

Despite several of Jamaica’s top athletes set to compete, retired Jamaican-born Olympic and world champion Donovan Bailey admits the World Athletics Ultimate Championships could lose some of its appeal with several of the sport’s biggest stars, including American Noah Lyles, set to miss the event.

The inaugural three-day invitational meet, which gets underway on Friday in Budapest, will feature the world’s top 16 athletes in individual track events and the top eight competitors in field events. Gold medallists from the 2024 Paris Olympics, 2025 Tokyo World Championships and this year’s Diamond League final winners earned automatic qualification while the remaining entrants were determined by the World Athletics Ranking for the period from last September to the start of this September.

However, reigning Olympic Games 100m champion and 200m world champion Lyles will be absent due to injury.