World Athletics Ultimate Championship: What is it and which Irish stars are competing?

The 42

ONE MONTH ON from the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham, attention turns to Budapest for the inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championship.

Over the next three nights – 11 to 13 September – Olympic champions, world champions and Diamond League winners will battle to be crowned the Ultimate Champion, with a record prize pot of $10 million (€8.5 million) on offer.

Irish trio Mark English, Rhasidat Adeleke and Sharlene Mawdsley are among the 381 top-ranked athletes from 65 federations who will compete at the Hungarian national stadium.

‘Real meaning’

Announced in June 2024, the Ultimate Championship is a season-ending invitational meet that will be held biennially, in even-numbered years between World Athletics Championships.

Automatic qualifiers 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.

“Our North Star is to maximise 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.”

Irish viewers can watch the 28 disciplines on BBC across the weekend, or through World Athletics+.

On the track, the two semi-finals 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 1500m, 5,000m and relay races will be straight finals.

All field events will be straight finals, although there is no room for shot put, discus or women’s hammer throw. Heptathlon, 10,000m and steeplechase are other notable absentees.

Pay day

Each Ultimate winner will receive the top prize of $150,000 (€129,000) – the largest in track and field history, and a sum World Athletics said was a game changer in a sport often seen to be underfunded. $75,000 (€64,000) is the reward for second place, with $40,000 (€34,000) on offer for third.

In fact, every athlete will earn money: an eighth-placed finisher in an individual event will bag $10,000 (€8,600) with 16th and last-place finishers leaving with $2,000 (€1,720). 

Armand ‘Mondo’ Duplantis is among the headline acts as the top-ranked athletes gather at the same Zsivotzky Gyula Nemzeti Atletikai Kozpont stadium that hosted the World Championships in 2023.

Several of this season’s other world record-breakers will also be in action, including US hurdlers Ja’Kobe Tharp (110m), Masai Russell (100m) and Brazil’s Alison dos Santos (400m hurdles).

Advertisement

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

The middle-distance programme is particularly attractive, with the women’s 800m featuring world leader Audrey Werro, Olympic champion Hodgkinson and Femke Broeders-Bol. A star-studded men’s 1,500m will see Jakob Ingebrigtsen, Josh Kerr, Olympic champion Cole Hocker and world champion Isaac Nader face off.

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.

Irish eye

European medallists Mark English and Rhasidat Adeleke, and the returning Sharlene Mawdsley, will fly the flag for Ireland in Budapest. All three qualified by rankings, with Andrew Coscoran, Cian McPhillips and Sarah Healy among those to miss out.

Mawdsley is out first on Friday evening, continuing her comeback from a recent hamstring injury in the 400m semi-finals. The Tipperary woman made a winning return in Italy on Tuesday, clocking 50.58 seconds in her first appearance since pulling up at National Championships in July.

Having missed the Europeans, Mawdsley qualified 13th in the ‘Road to the Ultimate’ rankings, with her season’s best of 50.06 seconds in the same position on the entries list. That mark, set on her Diamond League debut in Paris in June, was her fourth personal best of the season before it was cruelly interrupted.

Newly-crowned European 800m champion Mark English races for the first time since his fairytale night in Birmingham last month, taking to the track on Saturday evening. The Donegal doctor gave up his place in the Diamond League final, and continued training for this event at altitude in Spain.

English was seventh in the ‘Road to the Ultimate’ rankings, his season’s best of 1:42.97 the sixth fastest of the entries. The 33-year-old ran that personal best at the London Diamond League meet in July, and will be looking to close a memorable campaign on a high in Hungary.

Adeleke squeezed into the 200m, ranked 16th after turning her season around and storming to European silver. The Dubliner’s injury woes have been well documented, and having qualified for Europeans with her last chance, lit up Alexander Stadium in August.

Adeleke finished second only to Great Britain sprint queen Amy Hunt, clocking a personal best of 22.28 seconds. That is the eighth-fastest season’s best on another star-studded entry list featuring Hunt, Gabby Thomas and Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, the 24-year-old coming in off the back of a 22.85 showing in Italy last week.

Sunday’s 200m final – just two hours after the semi-finals – is the last event of the inaugural Ultimate Championship, with verdicts then due on its success and future.

With reporting from – © AFP 2026 

*****

Irish athletes at World Athletics Ultimate Championship 

• Sharlene Mawdsley - 400m semi-final 6.38pm Friday, final 5.08pm Saturday
• Mark English - 800m semi-final 5.34pm Saturday, final 6.41pm Sunday
• Rhasidat Adeleke - 200m semi-final 5.44pm Sunday, final 7.49pm Sunday

All times Irish, live coverage on BBC and World Athletics+ 

Written by Emma Duffy and originally published on The 42 whose award-winning team produces original content that you won’t find anywhere else: on GAA, League of Ireland, women’s sport and boxing, as well as our game-changing rugby coverage, all with an Irish eye. Subscribe here.