As a precursor to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the World Indoor Athletics Championships in Glasgow will be a major event. The competition brings together the best athletes of the moment. It is the best test less than five months before the Olympic Games.

A total of 651 athletes (331 women and 320 men) from 133 countries will compete in the 26 events of the World Indoor Championships from this Friday, 1 March, to Sunday, 3 March. Among them are 13 reigning individual world champions and seven individual Olympic gold medallists from the Tokyo Games. Neither Russia nor Belarus will be competing. Some of the current stars will be in Glasgow, including newly crowned US 60m champion Lyles, a three-time gold medallist at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, who promises a showdown with teammate and current runner-up Christian Coleman.

Lyles is the favourite to win four gold medals this year: in the 60m on Friday and then in the 100m, the 200m and the 4x100m relay at the Olympic Games in Paris. "World leader, meeting record," said Lyles after winning in 6.44 in Boston, according to AFP. She improved by a hundredth of a second at the national championships. "My confidence has gone through the roof. Now I'm going to Glasgow to try and win a world indoor medal," he added.

Jacobs won't be defending his title. But Lyles and Coleman will have to perform well if they don't want Jamaica's Ackeem Blake and Kenya's Ferdinand Omanyala to take the medals.

Olympic champion Duplantis has been virtually unbeatable in the men's pole vault for years. His world record gold in Belgrade was one of three records to be broken at the 2022 World Championships. The US-born Swede arrives in Glasgow with a season's best of 6.02m. This is a far cry from his world record of 6.23m. Norway's Warholm, the world record holder, three-time outdoor champion and Olympic gold medallist in the 400m hurdles, will run the 400m. He will be up against defending champion Jereem Richards of Trinidad and Tobago.

On the women's side, the spectacular Femke Bol will be the favourite in the 400m hurdles. She arrives in Glasgow in enviable form. The reigning double outdoor world champion will also be competing in the 400m flat. She broke her indoor world record of 49.24 seconds just a few weeks ago. Bol will be running twice on the same day in Glasgow: "That's the beauty of indoor athletics. But it also means that the best times are not always achieved." American Grant Holloway will also be in Scotland after breaking his own world record in the 60m hurdles. He has 60 indoor victories to his name.

British hopes include outdoor 1500m world champion Josh Kerr, who recently set a new indoor two-mile world record of 8:00.67 in the 3000m. He will be up against American Yared Nuguse and the Ethiopian duo of Olympic 10,000m champions Selemon Barega and Getnet Wale.
Jemma Reekie will compete in the 800m and Laura Muir in the 3000m. The latter will take on reigning world champion and main favourite Gudaf Tsegay of Ethiopia in the 1500m.