The World Athletics Indoor Championships opened in Nanjing on 21 March 2025 and ran through 23 March at the Nanjing Cube. It was the 20th edition of the meet.
On the eve of the opening, World Athletics CEO Jon Ridgeon told a press conference that Nanjing starts a run of four World Athletics Series events in Chinese cities between 2025 and 2027. The Relays follow in Guangzhou that May. Yangzhou hosts the Road Running Championships in March 2027, and Beijing the World Athletics Championships later that year.
“Over the next three days the stars of athletics will light up the Nanjing Cube in what I’m sure will be a dazzling showcase of world-class athletics,” Ridgeon said.
The China target
He called China a key market. Recent research, he said, puts athletics ninth among the country’s most followed sports. The aim is to lift it into the top five by the 2027 World Championships in Beijing.
Dong Hao, deputy secretary-general of the organising committee and director of the Nanjing Municipal Sports Bureau, sat alongside him. Nanjing, he said, has already staged the 2014 Youth Olympic Games and 71 other international sports events. He described the city as one of China’s first nationally designated historical and cultural cities, with a history of more than 3,100 years, and as home to 53 universities and nearly one million students.
Three athletes to watch
Three stars joined the panel. Mondo Duplantis of Sweden, the pole vault world record-holder, had set the 11th world record of his career not long before, clearing 6.27m in Clermont-Ferrand. He has gone over six metres 98 times. A hundredth would be possible in Nanjing, and he thought it likely. “The way everyone is jumping, I will probably have to do it just in order to win,” he said.
Ditaji Kambundji of Switzerland arrived with the European indoor 60m hurdles record of 7.67, set earlier that month in winning her European title. That time ranks joint second on the all-time list. Defending world champion and world record-holder Devynne Charlton of The Bahamas, who holds the 7.65 mark, was among her rivals. “I think it’s for sure going to take a really fast time,” Kambundji said.
Zaynab Dosso of Italy led the world at 60m with 7.01, which she ran to beat Kambundji’s older sister Mujinga, the 2022 world indoor 60m champion, at the European Indoor Championships. Her 100m best is 11.01. “Without any doubt, 10.99 is my main goal,” she said, though a sub-seven-second 60m in Nanjing, which she believes she can run, would be good preparation for the outdoor season.
Sources
Sources
- 2025 World Athletics Indoor Championships – Wikipedia
- WIC Nanjing 25 to kick off three-year journey through China
