Worlds, first 25 Azzurri to compete in Tokyo on Saturday
The World Championships in Tokyoare getting closer and closer. The highlight event of the season will kick off on the Japanese morning on Saturday (at 0.30 in Italy, brought forward by half an hour the start due to the expected great heat) with the first titles to be awarded in the men’s and women’s 35 km march, and with the first six Azzurri competing, starting with the ‘twenty’ Tokyo Olympic champion Antonella Palmisano, along with Eleonora Giorgi and Nicole Colombi, and among the men Riccardo Orsoni, Matteo Giupponi, Teodorico Caporaso.
It will also be the day of the direct final of the 10,000 meters with Paris Olympic silver medalist Nadia Battocletti (14.30 Italian) and Elisa Palmero, and there is also a double battery-final round scheduled on the same opening day for the weight, with reigning silver medalist Leonardo Fabbri, Zane Weir, Nick Ponzio (direct qualification with 21.35, or you have to stay in the top 12), and for the mixed 4×400 relay that sees Italy in the first of two batteries with the USA, Great Britain and Ireland.
Saturday, in the first of nine days (through Sunday, Sept. 21), is also the day of the qualifying debut for Larissa Iapichino in the long (6.75 Q capital), and the batteries for Marcell Jacobs and Zaynab Dosso in the 100.
World Championships at the start as well for Daisy Osakue in the discus (direct pass at 64 meters), Ala Zoghlami in the 3,000 steeplechase, Simone Bertelli and Matteo Oliveri in the pole, Marta Zenoni, Gaia Sabbatini and Ludovica Cavalli in the 1,500, for a total of 25 Italians. Between Thursday and Friday the last groups of Italian athletes will arrive in Tokyo: just Friday is the day of the official training at the National Stadium of Japan in the morning and the team meeting in the afternoon.
