Kenya's NCAA champion facing herculean task at World Indoor Championships
Reading Time: 4min | Tue. 17.03.26. | 21:26
The field is headlined by World record-holder Keely Hodgkinson who is seeks her first world indoor medal
NCAA Division I Indoor Track and Field 800m champion Gladys Chepngetich is set to face a loaded field when she steps on track for the World Indoor Championships, with the heats slated for Friday, 20 March at the Kujawsko-Pomorska Arena in Poland.
The Clemson University student who clocked 2:00.01 earlier in the week to become the first Kenyan woman to claim the NCAA indoor 800m crown, after a 2:01.56 preliminary heat, carries a 1:58.81 personal best (PB) to the race.
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Chepngetich achieved her current lifetime best in January, breaking the Kenyan indoor record of 1:58.83 previously held by Pamela Jelimo in winning the World Indoor Championships in 2012.
The performance also saw her become the second-fastest indoor 800m time in NCAA history, behind Olympic champion Athing Mu's collegiate record of 1:58.40 from 2021.
Despite her spectacular collegiate season, Chepngetich faces a deep field headlined by world record-holder Keely Hodgkinson, who seeks her first world indoor medal.
Audrey Werro is set to be her closest challenger, with Tsige Duguma and Isabelle Boffey among medal contenders.
Untimely injuries have prevented Hodgkinson from taking part in the past three editions of the competition, with her closest call coming in 2022 when she arrived in Belgrade having set the fastest women’s indoor 800m for 20 years, a 1:57.20, only to damage a quad muscle during warm-up.
This time, the 24-year-old Briton, who earned Tokyo Olympic silver and Paris Olympic gold and who has two world outdoor silver medals and a bronze, appears to be in perfect shape to give full expression to her talent in Poland, following a 2025 season to which she was only able to make a late entry in August.
In her first race of the season at the UK Indoor Championships, Hodgkinson lowered her British short track record from 1:57.18 to 1:56.33, moving up to third place on the world all-time list.
That was by way of a warm-up for her world record attempt at the World Indoor Tour Gold meeting in Liévin five days later, when she broke the mark of 1:55.82 set by Slovenia’s Jolanda Čeplak on 3 March 2002 – the day Hodgkinson was born – with 1:54.87.
She said afterwards that she thought she could go faster.
“I’ve had my healthiest winter for years,” she said in Birmingham. “It was so frustrating being on the sidelines for such a long time. I’m just happy to be able to do an indoor season and have nothing holding me back.”
What that will mean in the Kujawsko-Pomorska Arena Toruń remains to be seen – but it will be worth watching.
With Hodgkinson’s training partner, Georgia Hunter Bell, who narrowly beat her to 800m silver at last year’s World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, concentrating on the 1500m in Poland, her main challenger looks likely to be the 21-year-old Swiss athlete who has also benefitted from a full, hard winter of training, Werro.
Winner of the 2025 Diamond League title, Werro became the early world leader after improving her own Swiss short track record to 1:57.27 at the World Indoor Tour Gold meeting in Belgrade, having run 1:57.49 10 days earlier.
In Liévin, she contested the lead with Hodgkinson after the pacemakers had dropped away at the halfway point, but lost touch with her by 600 metres, finishing second in 1:58.38, with Ethiopia’s Olympic silver medallist Tsige Duguma finishing third in 1:58.83.
Duguma, who began her career as a 400m runner, will be seeking to replicate her performance at the 2024 edition of the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow when she announced her arrival as an 800m force by taking gold.
Hodgkinson’s compatriot Boffey will also be in the medal mix after running a personal best of 1:57.43 in Boston, a performance that has established her as the third fastest in this year’s world top list.
Other notable contenders include last year’s silver medalist Nigist Getachew of Ethiopia, the US pair of Valery Tobias and Addison Wiley, and Jamaica’s Natoya Goule-Toppin, while European indoor champion Anna Wielgosz races for the host nation.
Additional information by World Athletics