A look ahead to the IAAF World Youth Championships taking place in Cali, Colombia

Senior champions of the future are sure to be among the athletes in action in Cali over the next few days as the IAAF World Youth Championships takes place in Colombia.

Usain Bolt and Valerie Adams are among the athletes who won world youth titles before going on to take world and Olympic senior titles, while the event has also seen British success from the likes of Mark Lewis-Francis, Harry Aikines-Aryeetey, Jodie Williams and Asha Philip.

There are 27 GB athletes due to compete in Cali from July 15-19 including Hannah Brier, the Welsh junior record-holder with her 11.44 from the England Athletics Under-20 Championships last month, plus 800m runner Carys McAulay, 200m sprinter Cameron Tindle, middle-distance runners Alex Yee and Markhim Lonsdale and Hannah Williams, the sister of 2009 world youth 100m and 200m champion Jodie.

Triple jumper Naomi Ogbeta and 800m runner Ben Greenwood have been selected by their team-mates to captain the GB team.

“We have a really promising team heading to Cali and I’m looking forward to seeing how they perform on the world stage in this age-group,” said GB team leader Alan Richardson.

“The athletes selected show potential to be competitive at world level and I am sure they will perform excellently as well as using this championship as a springboard to longer term senior success.”

Full event-by-event previews can be found at iaaf.org but among the ones to watch is USA’s Candace Hill, the 16-year-old who ran 10.98 for 100m in June, and she is entered for both the 100m and 200m. Only one female athlete – Britain’s Jodie Williams – has so far completed a World Youths sprint double when she claimed both titles in 2009.

Similarly, only Britain’s Harry Aikines-Aryeetey has achieved the boys’ 100m and 200m double, but Japan’s Abdul Hakim Sani Brown will be looking to add his name to that list. Jamaica’s Christopher Taylor leads the world youth 400m rankings with his 45.55 from Kingston in June.

USA’s Sydney McLaughlin leads the 400m hurdles entries following her 55.28 world age-15 best clocked at the US Youth Championships.

World junior cross-country champion Letesenbet Gidey (pictured), who led an Ethiopian clean sweep of the medals in Guiyang in March, is among the entrants for the 3000m as she looks to take her winning form from the mud to the track. Emily Chebet, the Kenyan junior champion, leads her nation’s hopes in the event.

Montenegro’s Kristina Rakocevic is a medal contender in both the shot and discus and will be looking to become just the second athlete in the event’s history to do the double, while Ukraine’s Hlib Piskunov looks set to be a dominant force in the hammer, with throws of 84.56m and 83.11m to his name this season.

Cuba’s 8.12m man Maykel Demetrio Masso is in action in the long jump and is joined by his team-mate Juan Miguel Echevarria, while their compatriots Cristian Atanay Napoles and Julio Cesar Carbonell are the favourites in the triple jump.

British multi eventers Niamh Emerson and Michelle Hughes go up against a field including the likes of world youth leaders Alina Shukh of Ukraine (6039 points) and Austria’s Sarah Lagger (6014 points) in the heptathlon. Sam Talbot is GB’s representative in a decathlon competition which also involves Germany’s Niklas Kaul who claimed a 7783 point-tally in Filderstadt in June.

Provisional entry lists as of July 9 can be found here. The full GB team can be found listed here.

The action gets underway on Wednesday July 15 with the decathlon 100m at 9.30am local time, 3.30pm in the UK.

The full timetable can be found here.

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